NARENDRA MODI

It is difficult to believe that Prime Minister Narendra Modi, a career politician, wanted to be a yogi in the Himalayas when he was just 18. Five years hence when he will be 80 and end the current term he will retire to the Himalayas as a Monk, author and senior journalist Minhaz Merchant had claimed.

Modi says, he became a traveller -- a young man on a quest for answers about the world and himself. “I was undecided, unguided and unclear,” the prime minister told Humans of Bombay. “I didn’t know where I wanted to go, what I wanted to do and why I wanted to do it. But all I knew was that I wanted to do something,” he said.

Modi spoke at length about the two- year journey that helped him discover his “guiding force” -- (very) early mornings, baths in freezing Himalayan waters, and life with sadhus who taught him “to align himself with the rhythm of the universe”. “I went wherever God wanted to take me -- it was an undecided period of my life but still, gave me so many answers,” Modi said. “I learnt that peace, oneness and Dhyan can be found, even in the simple sound of a waterfall,” he said.

But more importantly, what he discovered in his first visit, he explained, continues to help him today. Most interestingly, how would an 8-year-old Modi have answered if he’d been asked if he dared to dream about becoming the prime minister? “His answer would be no. Never. It was too far to even think about.”

“At the age of 18, he went to the Himalayas and at the age of 80, I can guarantee you, he will again go to the Himalayas. He is not going to hang on to power. He will live like a monk,” Minhaz Merchant, who wrote a biography on former PM Rajiv Gandhi, claimed. Talking to India Today TV Consulting Editor Rajdeep Sardesai, Minhaz Merchant said, “There is every possibility that before the 2029 elections, he will step aside.”

Source: Himalayan News Chronicle