My parents were concerned that I would not get good schooling, so they put me up in my uncle's house in Dharwad, and I spent about six years there. So at a very young age, I was away from my parents. I developed an amount of independence and learned to stand on my own feet.

When India got independence, entrepreneurs were seen as a bad lot, as people who would exploit.

I always managed to get in trouble, like every kid. But I had to learn a lot of hard lessons on my own, without parents who would nurture me and guard me through that part of life, at a very young age.

My parents were never condescending to us. They treated us like adults from a very young age.

To have your parents get divorced at a young age, there's a lot of turbulence. We all grew up together, in some way. It was not idyllic. It was intense, vibrant, sometimes oppressive. I felt I was very much in a world of my own. I didn't meld much in school. I was kind of a loner.

I never spent much time with people my own age.