PVLF 2025

Interview with Rajesh Talwar, author of "The Mantra And Meaning Of Success"

on Feb 11, 2022

Rajesh Talwar has written thirty-two books, which include novels, children’s books, plays, self-help books and non-fiction books covering issues in social justice, culture and law. He has practiced law, taught at university, and also worked in senior positions with the United Nations in various countries across three different continents in a career spanning two decades. He is a British Chevening scholar and the recipient of an Honorary Citizenship Certificate from the Mayor of Tulsa (Oklahoma). He has been interviewed by The New York Times on the state of law and justice in India. He has studied for shorter and longer durations at various universities including Delhi University, Nottingham, Oxford, Cambridge and Harvard.

In many of his books he has tried to spread awareness about globally significant issues. For instance, in a children’s story book The Three Greens and a play The Killings in November he has written about environmental issues. He took up the cause of sexual minorities in his book The Third Sex and Human Rights and the play Inside Gayland. He has written about the dangers of a nuclear holocaust in his play A Nuclear Matricide. Crimes against women are discussed in his play The Bride Who Would Not Burn and his book Courting Injustice: The Nirbhaya Case and Its Aftermath.

As a writer, Talwar likes to stretch himself. In non-fiction he has put forward fascinating, well researched explanations on what happened to Subhash Bose in his book The Vanishing of Subhash Bose. In The Killing of Aarushi and the Murder of Justice he convincingly argues for the innocence of the Talwars critiquing both the trial court judgement and expert evidence tendered in that case.

Within the world of fiction, he has written in different styles and genres. His novel The Sentimental Terrorist is a literary novel that explores the theme of terrorism. On the other hand, An Afghan Winter also based in Afghanistan is written out like a thriller. Most recently Talwar has described his novel How to Kill a Billionaire as a literary thriller that reveals the workings of the Indian justice system. Rajesh works as Deputy Legal Adviser to the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan.

1. You have made a point in the book that “Creativity and innovation will give you real success and fame”. How would you elaborate this statement and enlighten us more?

In the book I speak of how you may be already successful but if you want to become super successful, if you do something new or differently that may take you to the next level. For instance, I speak of a meeting with the billionaire Ramesh Dua, one of the most modest but brilliant billionaires I have met. Mr Dua was introduced to me through a mutual friend Praveen Kumar, a great educator. Now Mr Dua has been in the footwear business (Relaxo Footwears) for decades, but he hadn’t heard of the ‘expanding slipper.’ When I spoke to him of this innovation introduced in some African countries, I had an opportunity to visit during my time with the United Nations, he became excited. For those who may not know, the expanding slipper was an innovation that addressed the concerns of poor families with small children. Everyone knows that children rapidly outgrow clothes, shoes and slippers. With this innovation the same slipper could be adjusted to cover a certain age group, so that when a six-year-old child becomes seven or eight, you don’t have to buy him new slippers! One of the innovations I suggested to Mr Dua, which he promised he would think over, was to recover plastic waste being dumped every year in the holy Ganges and use it to make shoes. It is my belief that all Indians would welcome such an initiative for on the one had you are cleaning the holiest of our rivers and on the other hand you are making a useful product that everyone needs.

2. What are the great dangers of success according to you?

The Beatles sang famously: ‘Money can’t buy me love.’ They could just as well have sung: ‘Money can’t buy me happiness.’

Not only can money not buy you happiness; it doesn’t provide you with any kind of insurance against depression.

Why was Deepika Padukone battling with depression? At the time the Bollywood actress made the confession, she was at the top of her game and ‘had it all’, so to speak. In 2020 she went to the Davos summit and addressed a gathering of world leaders on how we need to be more sensitive to those among us who are battling with depression. And wasn’t Michael Jackson a deeply troubled person despite being so successful?

Success and happiness are not the same thing, as Deepika Padukone’s example tells us. Thousands of successful people live deeply troubled lives; some of them, such as Deepika, are even diagnosed with clinical depression. Think of the great film maker Guru Dutt, who gave us classics such as Pyaasa and Sahib, Bibi and Ghulam, and who committed suicide; or world-famous actress Marilyn Monroe, who also reportedly took her own life.

Deepika’s video in which she speaks of her symptoms is easily searchable on the internet. She hated getting up in the morning to face the world. She wanted to just go on sleeping. She felt sad all the time. Eventually, she was diagnosed with clinical depression.

My feeling is that people who look at success from the outside often think something along the lines of: ‘Oh, how lucky! I wish I could be in that person’s shoes!’

When a person like Deepika is apparently blessed with good looks, a good figure, a good family, a successful career, money and fame – surely all this is enough to make any person happy? What more does she want? Some people have so little, and she has so much. What an ungrateful person! Shouldn’t she be counting her blessings?

What does anyone know about the issues that Deepika is faced with? All is not always what it seems from the outside.

It can be lonely at the top. Sometimes loneliness can grab you at the moment of your biggest success. In the documentary Miss Americana, pop singer and global celebrity Taylor Swift reveals how, after winning a major award, at the moment of her greatest triumph, she felt overwhelmed by loneliness. She felt sad because there was no one in her life that she could properly share her happiness with.

3. People’s tendency to try hard multiple times to reach success but with the same approach sometimes does not work the right way. We would like you to share some useful tips on how to avoid it?

Let me give you two important tips in this interview, which I speak of in my book. For the rest you’ll have to buy the book which is 70,000 words plus and has a lot of tips. The first tip is: Listen carefully! And the second one is: Don’t overdo your adherence to the truth! I speak here of these two tips on the basis of my own life experience.

Many years ago, as a young lawyer, I applied for a part-time teaching position at Delhi University. The university tried to get lawyers to teach subjects related to criminal and civil procedure and the Indian Supreme Court rules and procedure. The remuneration was not much, but such an assignment commanded prestige. Together with a lawyer friend of mine (this species is rare), named Rakesh, I went for the interview.

The interview went off reasonably well. The professors on the panel were civil and courteous. Towards the end, one of them asked me where I lived. He looked at my application.

‘Is it Noida?’ he asked, looking up.

‘Yes,’ I confirmed. The city was in a neighboring state, an hour’s drive from the law center.

‘Oh, that’s too far!’ he responded, and looked around the table.

The chair of the panel nodded and explained that although they were satisfied with my qualifications and performance in the interview, I lived too far away.

‘But I have a vehicle,’ I protested, ‘and I promise to be regular.’ ‘We don’t doubt your intentions,’ said the professor gently, ‘and thank you for your interest. However, it has been our experience that lecturers who live far away often miss classes – or reach them late. That, of course, is to the detriment of our students.’

The interview was over.

My friend Rakesh, who also lived in Noida, had a similar experience. He knew a couple of professors personally and had been more hopeful, and was therefore more disappointed than I was. He had been almost certain that he would get one of the two posts advertised.

‘It’s a bloody scam,’ he exploded. ‘They already had their candidate.’

‘I don’t agree,’ I said. ‘Their concern was genuine – and legitimate.’

Rakesh shook his head, not persuaded.

Six months down the line, a similar advertisement appeared in the papers. Once again there were two vacant posts. Possibly the earlier-selected candidates had not performed satisfactorily – or they had not found the salary to be commensurate with the work involved.

I decided to apply once again. I informed Rakesh of the advertisement and asked if he would apply. It’s always good to have company for an interview, and besides, there were two posts advertised.

‘Nah,’ he said. ‘I tell you, it’s all a scam.’

At the time I had a cousin in the military who lived in the Dhaula Kuan Cantonment area, just a couple of kilometers from the University of Delhi’s evening law center. I decided to use his address while applying instead of my own in Noida. A few days later he called me to let me know that a letter for me had arrived in the post.

The interview panel wasn’t identical to the previous one, but there were a couple of professors who had been on the earlier one.

Once again, the interview went off well, and once again towards the end of the interview they asked me where I lived.

‘Dhaula Kuan. At the cantonment. A ten-minute drive.’

The professor who had asked this question looked at my application and saw that this was indeed the address provided.

‘Wonderful!’ The professor smiled. ‘When can you start?’

Now, the thing is that I knew that I would be regular and not miss any classes, despite the distance involved. For this reason, while the concern of the professors was legitimate, I don’t think I was being deceitful or even unethical. Even if I was, I believe this much is acceptable. It is possible to overdo one’s adherence to the truth.

4. People, after getting successful most of the time, freeze their creativity which makes it hard for them to maintain their success in the long run. What would you like to say about that?

There are several reasons why the creative spirit can be disturbed by success. The phenomenon itself is well documented, but philosophers and psychologists either have not considered the issue important enough to investigate or have not, in any event, provided a satisfactory explanation for why it happens.

I can think of at least three reasons.

The rise of the ego. Success makes you self-conscious. You become more aware of yourself, but not in a positive way – rather, it must be said, in a negative way. You feel you are somebody; your ego is constantly massaged by friends, fans and the media. With the rise of an ego which lay dormant when you were nobody, or at least nobody important, you cease to be a messenger for the beyond, which is where the creative spirit lives. This is what happened with Khalil Gibran, who kept writing after he became world-famous but could never match the eloquence of The Prophet, his own creation. This is what happened with Arundhati Roy and The God of Small Things; this is what happened with Mario Puzo and The Godfather. Arundhati took more than two decades before she wrote her second novel. Mario Puzo never wrote anything significant after The Godfather. And this is what has happened with scores of other creative spirits.

The rise of the ego creates a kind of disorder in the personality. A person becomes more self-conscious, and the feeling of self-importance can become overwhelming.

Remaining grounded is not easy. Unlike the others who are mentioned above, why did M.F. Hussain continued to paint till the end of his days? Why did his creative spirit not freeze? Or for that matter take Salman Rushdie, who won the Booker Prize long before Arundhati, but went on to write many more important novels, even being awarded with the Booker of Bookers at a later stage.

There are no clear answers to such questions. The creative phenomenon is a mysterious one. In Hussain’s case, I like to think that it may have had something to do with the fact that he rose up from the slums of Mumbai. Did his struggles for very many years keep the painter grounded even after he became a star feted and recognised on the international circuit?

I consider ego to be the primary cause for the phenomenon of ‘freezing’, but there may be other factors as well.

The pressures of success. Once you are successful, there is pressure on you to maintain that success. Pressure to create is never good because it introduces the idea of timelines, and the free spirit is no respecter of time. It lives in eternity. There is a reason Vikram Seth could not complete An Unsuitable Boy, the sequel to A Suitable Boy, the novel that made him a literary star and a millionaire. The author tried hard, but after several extensions let down his publisher and his agent, despite having taken an advance. What happened? His creative spirit had frozen.

Strict deadlines are never good for the true artist. I remember reading a book by a famous Indian journalist, where the scribe blamed journalism for destroying the writer and potential novelist in him.

Now, many of us may think that if you want to be a great writer of books it makes sense to become a journalist. It will help you make a living till the time that your first book is a great critical and commercial success. It will keep you connected with the craft of writing, with other scribes and with the publishing world in general.

All of this sounds logical enough, but if you are forced to churn out material, factory-like, sticking to deadlines that your editor sets you every week, the well of creativity within you will start to dry up.

It’s like the farmer who uses too much fertilizer and plants crop after crop, which sucks up all the water in the land without allowing time for it to be replenished.

There is a famous saying that sums up the issue: ‘The desire to finish in an artist is criminal.’

The importance of leisure and space. A third reason why the creative spirit might freeze is that once you attain stardom of a kind, irrespective of the sphere in which you have attained it, your life and lifestyle change. Many successful people have written about how their life changed once they were successful. In India you are besieged by chamchas, for one thing. The media hound you. Leaving aside those who gather around and wish to bask in your reflected glory, there are other important people who also wish to be close to you. For instance, Subodh Gupta, a rising young Indian artist, was invited by Shah Rukh Khan to a party in his house because Shah Rukh’s wife, Gauri, noticed his work when it was exhibited at the Saatchi Gallery in London. With success, your circle of friends automatically expands. You now do not have the same leisure and space that you had before.

The famous philosopher Bertrand Russell wrote an essay titled ‘In Praise of Idleness’. In that essay, he says that idleness is unnecessarily maligned. It is in our idle moments that we uncover new truths and make fresh discoveries.

The essay is an interesting one, but the title is a clever distortion designed to make the essay sound more provocative to potential readers. Russell should rather have titled his essay ‘In Praise of Leisure’. After all, it is up to the person what he wishes to do with his leisure time. He may choose to be idle, or he may choose to spend his time creatively.

Russell may argue that it is sometimes in idle moments that we have a breakthrough, but on the other hand, even in those seemingly idle moments, our subconscious is busy at work.

The issue is having the leisure, time and space to do the things you wish to do.

5. What is the art of Compromise?

It’s all about striking the right balance. Don’t make any major compromise but don’t be too rigid. For instance, sometimes you must listen to market forces. Mario Puzo did so when he wrote The Godfather, after he found that the excellent novels he was writing within the genre of literary fiction, were not earning him a decent living.

At the same time, if you only listen to the market you will tend to be imitative. You will create copycat products, write formulaic fiction or make overly derivative movies that will most likely bomb. Even if you are lucky and succeed in making a profit, you will acquire an unsavory reputation as a businessman without ethics who steals ideas. It is unlikely that you will produce something that has real quality and is also commercially successful.

If you bow to the market too easily, a few things will automatically follow as a kind of karma that will lead you astray from the path to true success. For example, if as a songwriter you compromise on the lyrics (perhaps you introduce salacious lyrics to please the crowds), you can only aspire to mid-level success. If you compromise on the quality of your music, this will also have an impact on your reputation.

You will disappoint your fans and dent your own brand image. It will be the equivalent of an own goal.

If you compromise too easily, your talent will gradually but surely dissipate.

This does not mean that you should be rigid and inflexible, on the other hand.

The American novelist Henry James could have stuck to his guns and said: ‘No, I want to be a playwright, not a novelist.’ Likewise, Mario Puzo could have told himself: ‘No, I will continue to write only literary novels and will attain success as a literary giant. I will not lower my level to write a mainstream novel.’

For that matter, Madhur Jaffrey, an actor who became a famous cookbook author, could have told herself: ‘Cookbook? I don’t even know how to cook! I will just focus on my acting career.’

In each of the aforesaid cases, such a decision would have demonstrated excessive rigidity.

When to compromise, and when not to, is a very important decision to make, and there are often no easy answers.

Life throws each one of us a great opportunity at some point in our lives.

Don’t be in a hurry to turn down an opportunity that presents itself. Think the matter over carefully, take advice from experts or friends if necessary, sleep on it, and only then decide.

6. Would you choose a path to your own dreams or your parents’ dreams for you?

Choose your own path, but do not throw all practical considerations to the wind. A while ago, I watched a BBC program in which a famous Jewish American architect was interviewed. A tall man in his late sixties, he had designed landmark buildings across the world.

The interviewer asked him a standard question: Had he always wanted to be an architect? He explained that this was not the case. In his youth he wished to be a painter. A painter, his mother told the young lad, would always find it difficult to earn a living. A strong-minded woman, she suggested other careers instead in which, once he finished his studies and if he did well, it was more or less guaranteed he would make a decent living. They had heated arguments over the course of the next few days. In the end his mother came up with a suggestion that was a compromise in some respects but one that he found acceptable. Architecture was that compromise. He could indulge his artistic fantasies; at the same time, he would make a decent living.

He was asked if he regretted the decision.

‘Never,’ he said. ‘It was the best decision of my life.’