Interview: Satish Modi on meeting Prince Charles and dealing with death
The businessman, philanthropist and author tells Kate Whitehead about kidnap threats, founding an airline and meeting an acquaintance from a previous life
T I was born in a town called Modinagar, in Uttar Pradesh, which is named after the Modi family. My father (Rai Bahadur Gujarmal Modi) founded the town in a suburb of Delhi in 1932. When he arrived there was nothing. He started a sugar factory and one thing led to another and he set up a lot of industries (under the Modi Group), gave housing to 15,000 workers and, later, set up educational institutions and hospitals, so it became a complete town.
I have four brothers - I'm in the middle with two above and two below. I went to boarding school in India and studied engineering before joining the family textiles business. I lost my father when I was 28. My brothers and I faced a difficult task (in emulating his business success), but I was innovative. I set up India's first private airline in 1993 with Lufthansa. It was called ModiLuft. It was very glamorous - we had blond airhostesses - but it was also stressful. The government didn't allow us to print schedules because they thought we were competing with the national carrier (Air India). So we had to say, "Take a breakfast flight from Delhi to Bombay", or "Take a dinner flight". That's the price you pay for being a pioneer. We shut it down in 1996 and I restarted it in 2005 as SpiceJet.
Wealth can be troublesome. I have three children - two daughters and one son. In 1995, there was a kidnap threat on my son, who was 14, and they asked for US$2 million, although the kidnap was never carried out. The police suggested we relocate outside India so we moved to London and I've lived there ever since. In London, I set up the charity Arts for India (to promote education in India for underprivileged children through scholarships). I also set up a yarn factory in Manchester, with a local partner.
An incident in 2005 was a turning point for me. This is how fate strikes. The then Japanese prime minister (Junichiro Koizumi) was visiting India with 30 business leaders, as well as a Buddhist leader, Her Holiness Setsuko Nakanishi. They were at the Oberoi hotel (in Mumbai) and couldn't find a conference room in which to meet. I knew about a small private club in the hotel and suggested to the manager they make the space available between the lunch and dinner sittings. The Buddhist leader wanted to thank me. As I entered the hall - I'm six foot one, she was just four foot one - we made eye contact and she started crying, tears rolling down her cheeks. She took my hands and declared to everyone, "I know this man from a previous life." I didn't feel it, but she was on a higher plane and could see it. I believed her. You can't just cry like that, it was a real emotion. Then she sang a prayer for me and invited me to Japan.
SpiceJet was launching in Japan, so I went to visit. My business partners really laid out the red carpet for me, with a reception and limousine. I went to Kyoto to meet Nakanishi, although we were never on our own because I couldn't speak Japanese. Again she saw me and was under a kind of spell, crying. She ordered a vegetarian meal and we discussed religion and life. She invited me the next morning to her house, above which is a Buddhist chapel, where we went to pray together. Before I left, I asked, "How will we communicate?" She replied, "Through dreams." I started having profound dreams, so I decided to capture them and my thoughts in a book.
took five years to write. In the book, I try to show that if we think about life, we lead a much better life. No matter how big a house you live in, ultimately you end up in the grave. Death is a great equaliser - everyone converts to dust. If you focus on money it will make you unhappy because it will make you arrogant. The key to happiness is to be humble and pursue love and friendship - that will make you happy.
Initially, just 500 copies were published because they didn't think many people would want to read it. Then, in 2010, I was nominated for the Prince of Wales Medal for Arts and Philanthropy and went for dinner at Buckingham Palace. Prince Charles usually spends one minute with each guest, but he wanted to know more about my ideas. His brother-in-law, Mark Shand, who founded the Elephant Family charity, invited me to Edinburgh, in Scotland. In 2012, I accepted the invitation and was hosted by a 70-year-old banker who had an 800-acre estate outside Edinburgh. He had read my book and took me to see his grave. He said, "What you have written in the book I have initiated here" - the book says to write down your name and the date you think you will die. That year I was presented with the World Peace Tartan in Edinburgh.
I'm 68. I don't give myself more than 15 years to live. You want to live being healthy. You don't want to die in hospital. I can't take anything from here, not even my body. What is important is your own soul, your own journey. Now my journey has started because this book has been liked by so many people. I've been talking to a few movie producers who want to make a film based on it, and someone who wants to make it into a TV series. It was a difficult book to write. It is my one and only book.
In Love with Death.