I was born and brought up by poor parents who couldn’t provide me and my other siblings’ proper education, clothes and daily meals. My father has two wives, but there are no hard feelings in the family. I adore my stepmother and her children because we all live together. I have one brother and two half-siblings. Singing happened out of desperate situation.

There is a most famous statement that has come down from the scriptures: “Act without expectation about the fruits and rewards of your action. That’s the way to lead a fulfilled, successful and thrilling life.” I know we are not discussing philosophy here. We are trying to harness the power of intention within us, but read on anyway.

Our first child was a special gift from God. We had prayed for a baby girl and God fulfilled our desire. In today’s time, no one wants a daughter. Everyone wants sons and kills daughters when they are still in the womb. But we wanted our first child to be a girl, an avatar of Goddess Lakshmi.

One clear call to the Universe — that is what Intention is all about. “Help me”. I am doing everything in my power but it’s not enough — “so help me please”. That’s the message sent across the abyss, across the skies, across the twilight zone that separates the tiny Known from the all-powerful Unknown.

I am still answering a young teenage friend who seems depressed and wants more than nice sounding words to make him feel better.

The ordeal though is far from over. I might not be in police custody at the moment, but the month-long trauma still haunts me. In fact, I don’t quite remember the last time when I had a good night’s sleep. The humiliation was unfathomable and needless to say, has had an impact on me so longlasting that I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to get over it.

I hate being myself. I want to be someone else, like so and so (a popular movie star) whose ardent fan I am.

Today stress is one of the biggest killers of our race. There is no doubt that modernisation of society has brought with it more options, more choices and therefore more decisions to make. I still feel that my childhood was less complicated than my children’s and shudder to think what their children would be faced with.

What would you do if you found out that your family went missing and was brutally murdered and reduced to skeletons? I couldn’t even imagine such a scenario. My family is no more. It has been mercilessly killed and I really have no one.

I Feel no guilt whatsoever. Deception is nature’s way of protecting itself. Every animal in the world uses it. Even plants, worms and bacteria practise it. Inside your body, intruding parasites do their best to deceive their way in, and so do the sentinels, the white blood corpuscles that guard your health.