Smita Joshi is the author of the Karma and Diamonds trilogy, a journey of self-discovery across continents and lifetimes.
A British Indian, Smita Joshi was born in Mahatma Gandhi’s hometown Porbandar, Gujarat, before moving to London at ten. She was a corporate business executive selling multi-million dollar contracts to global, blue chip companies and was one of the first to bring India’s Information Technology services into European companies.
As a freelance You Tube TV presenter, she gets over 225,000 views, and has interviewed leading politicians, entrepreneurs and gurus. She’s a life coach and yoga teacher.
Smita’s father was born in Kampala, Uganda. He left at 18 to study in India, where he met her mother, a then Law undergraduate in Ahmedabad. After they married, her parents lived in her mother’s native Porbandar. After Idi Amin’s expulsion of Indians from Uganda in 1972, Smita’s father’s family made a home in London. Smita and her parents joined them a few years later.
In Porbandar, Smita was close to her paternal grandmother and maternal grandfather.
Her grandmother instilled in her Indian cultural and spiritual values. The Gita, Upanishads and Vedas were read daily, grounding her in the power of the inner self.
Her grandfather, a renowned lawyer in Gujarat, encouraged her English schooling. She would catch snippets of discussions with his clients, either at home or at his office, where she would often go straight from school and sit in his office’s antechamber; lined floor to ceiling with black, red and gold leather-bound law books. She would keep him engaged in endless questions about the history of the Maharajas, poetry of Rabindranath Tagore. This ignited her curiosity for cultures, travel and exploration.
In her teens and adulthood, Smita confronted the differences between a traditional, community-centric Indian culture and that of modern day London.
At the age of 20, however, she had to decide whether or not to marry. In the midst of this angst, she had a vivid, intuitive awakening. She knew that in order to be a good partner or mother “I first had to discover who ‘I’ was,” she says.
She had to find a way of doing this without breaking her parents’ hearts.
A few years later in her twenties, though on the outside she was doing well, deep, buried emotions from her childhood began to surface. She found it difficult to connect and have a rapport with people, yet she craved meaningful relationships. Her journey of self-discovery took her on a quest across continents. She went to the foothills of the Himalayas, New Mexico, Hawaii and Kauai; the story which she writes about in her Karma & Diamonds series.
Smita felt she has an innate intelligence, referred to as the ‘Inner Diamond’. India’s rishis have called this Atman, the part localised aspect of Brahman, or universal consciousness.
Smita learnt to tap into this through meditation and other self-awareness practices. At difficult times, such as when she suddenly lost her job or discovered that she had a life-threatening disease, her inner being showed up and guided her way. As she learned to listen to her still inner voice and to trust its unerring wisdom to get her through unexpected traumas and pain, life began to flow with grace. She used this intuitive capacity in all areas of her life, including her corporate work, to produce exceptional business results.
“Connecting to our inner intelligence and allowing it to steer us through life is the secret to living a fulfilling life. My journey is an illustration of this and one that I felt worth sharing with others”, says Smita.
After a successful career in international business and years of searching for life’s answers in ashrams as well as within, she found her soul partner, finished writing her three books and found a publisher.
In her thirties, over a number of months, Smita found herself in agonising pain. Doctors told her this pain was ‘normal’ and dismissed her requests for further rigorous medical examinations. Eventually, she went privately for a laparoscopy and discovered an horrific advanced disease that doctors refused to treat. Meanwhile, the pain was getting more frequent and unbearable. Her disease was life threatening, however, Smita made up her mind to live. Not knowing where else to seek help, she turned within and sought the help of her inner self. Within months, a series of synchronicities landed her with the one doctor in London who had the expertise to treat her. In four laser surgeries, each four hours long, he managed to not only save her, but gave her a new lease of life.
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“The Gita, Upanishads and Vedas were read daily, grounding her in the power of the inner self.”
