From Bollywood to Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh’s Ashram for some eternal solace and than back to dirty world of politics and finally becoming a minister in the Atal Behari Vajpayee government was quite a distance for Vinod Khanna to cover.

Does it show a restless soul out to do something –anything – in life or something else is really difficult to fathom for an ordinary mortal.

Frankly one doesn’t know whether Khanna himself will be able to answer this question convincingly. But a look into his past could possibly throw some light.

Khanna, by now we know, is a man with a winning streak, not known to give in easily. Perhaps it was that streak that pulled him away from Bhagwan Rajneesh, unable as he probably was to play second fiddle, even to a demi-god. Or perhaps his restless soul is still searching for peace, through a transcendental journey that that began years ago when a psychic in America told Vinod Khanna that he had been an American disciple of Paramhansa Yogananad, whose picture he was attracted by from his childhood, in his previous birth.

The United States pyshic also told him he had died during World War II. What this knowledge did to Khanna’s mind, one doesn’t know. But it definitely led the man, still rated among the most handsome in India, on a path of physical renuniciation that seems to have ended in the most unlikeliest of places --- the dirty, murky world of Indian politics.

From the material to the spiritual and then back to the material, from marriage to divorce to another marriage, Khanna has loved through a myriad of experiences. And played a variety of roles, some negative but most of them positive, centering around his tough personality.

If you had spoken to the stuntmen during the days of ´Mera Gaon Mera Desh´ (1971), they would have told you how Khanna was tougher than his senior, Jat hero Dharmendra. Few people know that Vinod Khanna readily agreed to be badly beaten and bloodied in a fight scene with Dharam. But physical toughness apart, Khanna is known to have a tough mind, stubborn not prone to admitting defeat.

It was with this winning streak that he entered politics, graduating quickly from being a tentative first-timer to a two-time veteran Member of Parliament from his hometown Gurdaspur, Punjab. And it is this toughness of purpose and determination that he has now brought into the Union Cabinet, to which he has been inducted as Minister of State for Tourism and Culture.

If Bollywood, as some say, plays a significant role in arousing the nation’s imagination, Khanna, one can be sure, will play a pivotal role in shaping the vision that the people of this country have of what a politician should be and how he should carry himself.

And more importantly, given the courage of purpose he is known to possess, one can be sure that if anyone can succeed in transforming culture into a subject of civilisation – where it belongs -- and not politics, it is him. Unless, of course, his restless soul takes him on to other cycles of life.