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I would be gone, I was only a guest. You don't start investing in a guest -- tomorrow morning he will be gone. They acted out of a space which parents cannot. That's where things went wrong with me.
They allowed me total freedom to be myself because they had no desire to mold me. In fact, they wanted me to go back to my parents, so whatsoever my parents wanted me to become I would be available. My maternal grandfather actually said to me many times, "Our whole effort is to return you to your parents the same clean slate as they gave us. We don't want to write anything on you. Who knows? -- it may be against your parents' wishes. You belong to them, to us you are a guest: all that we can do is give you freedom, our love, space to grow."
But the first seven years are the most important in life; never again will you have that much opportunity. Those seven years decide your seventy years, all the foundation stones are laid in those seven years. So by a strange coincidence I was saved from my parents -- and by the time I reached them, I was almost on my own, I was already flying. I knew I had wings. I knew that I didn't need anybody's help to make me fly. I knew that the whole sky is mine.
I never asked for their guidance, and if any guidance was given to me I always retorted, "This is insulting. Do you think I cannot manage it myself? I do understand that there is no bad intention in giving guidance -- for that I am thankful -- but you do not understand one thing, that I am capable of doing it on my own. Just give me a chance to prove my mettle. Don't interfere."
In those seven years I became really a strong individualist: hard-core. Now it was impossible to put any trip on me.
I used to pass through my father's shop, because the shop was in front -- at the back was the house where the family lived. That's how it happens in India: house and shop are together so it is easily manageable. I used to pass through my father's shop with closed eyes.
He asked me, "This is strange. Whenever you pass through the shop into the house, or from the house" -- it was just a twelve foot space to pass -- "you always keep your eyes closed. What
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