By Shishir Prashant 
PrashantNews
Be audacious in life, know exactly where you want to go and, above all, understand the route to get there. National Security Adviser Ajit Doval offered IIT Roorkee students two key mantras of success — one drawn from the Ramayana and the other from a Tibetan Sherpa who helped him through one of the most difficult moments of his early career.
Addressing students at IIT Roorkee on Saturday, Doval urged them to cultivate courage and cited Lord Ram as an example of an audacious personality. Referring to the Ramayana, he said sage Vishwamitra chose Ram over his brother Bharat to accompany him to fight the demons because of Ram’s courageous personality.
Doval linked courage with the willingness to face hardship, telling the students: “No pains, no gains.”
He then recalled an episode from the early years of his career that, he said, had once made him feel that his career was almost over.
As a young IPS officer associated with intelligence work in Sikkim, Doval was responsible for keeping watch on developments along the border. On one occasion, an intelligence team was sent on a five-six-day mission to monitor the situation across the border. But even after 10-11 days, the team did not return.
Doval said he subsequently received a call from headquarters informing him that the team had been taken into custody by the Chinese People’s Liberation Army.
He feared that the episode could end his career. The team members were eventually released unharmed, and an inquiry found that mistakes in the maps and sketches provided to the team had caused confusion over the identification of the border. Doval said he was not held responsible for the incident, but the episode left him deeply disappointed.
It was during this difficult period that a Tibetan Sherpa working with him in the Intelligence Bureau offered advice that Doval said stayed with him for life.
The Sherpa, who Doval said had climbed Mount Everest eight times and spent 24 years on snow peaks, told him that the problem was essentially one of map reading—some people read a map correctly while others do not.
He then gave Doval three questions that became a lifelong guide: Where are you standing? Where do you want to go? And what is the route to get there and return?
For Doval, the advice eventually became much more than a lesson in navigation. It became a way of looking at life—understanding one’s starting point, having clarity about the destination and knowing the path needed to reach it.
Together, Doval’s two lessons to the students were simple: have the courage to venture forward and have the clarity to know where you are going.