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India's most successful spiritual import to America, Dr Deepak Chopra, sheds light on his new plans.

Can you call me back in 10 minutes... it could even be 6-7 (minutes)." Dr Deepak Chopra, India's most successful spiritual import to America (his official designation though is founder, Alliance For New Humanity, a network of people who look for "creative solutions" to the world's issues) is obviously a man of detail.

Or I am inclined to read him as such at this moment. My eyes firmly on the clock, I call, seven minutes to the second. And he picks up straight away.

The affable doc is also a man of his word. One who knows his limitations precisely "" how much he'll be able to accomplish in how long: It has taken him seven precise seconds to hotfoot from the gym to his apartment, and the chat is on.

But first, switch off. I confess I have been reading too much of Dr Chopra. And if you can discern any influence blame it on the Seven Spiritual Laws to Success. One of the laws, after all, is to "know one's limitations."

The book is still lying by my bedside, I quite like it, even if critics have carped that it is (along with much of Chopra's work) just repackaging of ancient Indian philosophy. Kind of dumbing down of the Vedas. My stand? What's the harm?

Another "law" tells us to convert adversity into opportunity. In this universe, no karmic debt ever goes unpaid so the best you can do with bad karma is to transform it. I have long mulled over this, but this time, the guru-author is perhaps out to set an example himself. We all know that Dr Chopra and filmmaker Shekhar Kapur have been trying to write a screenplay on the life of Gautam Buddha for several years now.

So is a film never taking off bad karma? "We've written eight drafts, but each time we don't like it, so we have to begin afresh. We'll now do the ninth one," laughs Dr Chopra. But, and this is where I come to the setback-opportunity bit, what he's doing is taking it forward anyway.

On the agenda is a novel on the life of the Buddha. Part history, part fiction, to be published by Harper Collins. "It will have everything, sex, violence..." Dr Chopra promises. It will be an entertainer? I sound hopeful, he laughs, "Yes, but Buddha stops being entertaining once he achieves enlightenment!"

I hope for more such bytes but the doc is now talking Islam: the fact that a substantial per cent of Muslims are moderates (!), that a substantial number of Muslim women believe in the sharia, and that most people in the Islamic world blame their chaos and ills on meddling by the West.

The exclamation, by the way, is for America; the findings from a Gallup poll in 10 Islamic countries. The latest on the Chopra CV is that he is associated with the organisation and poll.

"I am doing three books at the moment. The fourth will be on Islam", he adds. That will make it 42 plus four, in case you haven't kept count.

In the meanwhile, there are comic books. Gautam, Chopra's son, is at the helm at Gotham comics, the company supposed to present before the world superheroes from Indian myth. The company has now tied up with Richard Branson's Virgin, and also with John Woo, the Mission Impossible guy.

"The first stage is comic books, the second animation, and the third movies," Dr Chopra expounds. Devi has already come out as the first of the series, there haven't been too many kind words, but what do you know? "Nicole Kidman wanted to do it..." Deepak Chopra will have the last word.