Sudhir Kakar is 66, but India's best-known psychoanalyst is certainly on a song. He has been writing prolifically and released his 17th book, Mira and the Mahatma last year.
"This is, so far, my best novel," he says.
The book deals with Kakar's favourite subject -- the link between one's sensuality and spirituality and its impact on one's creation.
In elegantly written prose, Kakar has imagined the mystic relationship between Mahatma Gandhi and Madeline Slade who was renamed Mira by him. Madeline was infatuated by Gandhi. She came to India on the recommendation of Gandhi's biographer Romain Rolland.
Her father was a senior officer of the British Navy who dedicated his life to serving the British Empire, while his daughter set out to join a man whom the British considered their most relentless enemy. When she arrived in India her interest was Gandhi, not India. But Gandhi was deeply engaged in the spiritual quest within. He distanced himself from Mira.
Photograph: Mahatma Gandhi flanked by Abhaben and Meeraben on the lawns of Birla House New Delhi, 1948.
All Gandhi photographs: Kind courtesy http://www.mahatma.org.in/