Seagal came in an hour late dressed in a wine-coloured robe topped by two silk shirts a red one under a yellow one and proceeded to roll up his sleeves for the next five minutes. Things looked ominous then but he only said he was in India to ``raise funds for Tibetan refugees, raise awareness for human rights and against religious persecution''. The news conference had been called by the Karuna Foundation, a non-sectarian Buddhist organisation, which has received funding from Seagal.

It was all very sensible and soothing thus far. The star of Under Seige films continued for a while on how people all over the world, especially in the West, in its darkest hour were turning towards spirituality and further on he talked about his own love for Buddhism and his practice of the religion.

Things began to get out of hand when Seagal took offence to a question that asked him how he reconciled the high violence of his films such as Executive Decision and Hard To Kill with his high spirituality in real life. Annoyed just about begins to describe his response. ``I explain my acting the way you, the press, explains its violence.'' The reporter was somewhat taken aback by the unconventional answer. Seagal explained: ``The press is the most vulgar example of perpetrating violence.'' And he is not, because as he put it, ``I understand the difference between virtue and non-virtue, the machinations of life have to do with your motivations''. He would like the world to rest assured his motivations are always good as he acts in movies.

The newspersons reacted by informing him that the press and Seagal were not one and the same as the Fourth Estate was not at that moment speechifying on the virtues of compassion, as he was. Getting red in the face Seagal decided in favour of dropping the subject altogether but not before he had showed some muscle. ```I can go toe-to-toe with you on this, we can have a boxing match on this,'' he said. He's closer to the ceiling at any given time than the floor, so it seemed wise not to take up the challenge.

Instead, the Glimmerman was happy to talk about his association with India. He said: ``I love India. I have a great karmic connection with India and it has more great art, more great culture and spirituality than anywhere else in the world.''

But he was reluctant to discuss the Tibetan cause as he said that he was trying hard to remain apolitical and would not say that independence for Tibet was on his agenda. But he would say that ``it was his great hope and prayer that it would happen''.

Once again returning to the subject of his care for the sufferings of others, he said he was in India despite the heat, the sickness from food and water, only for the sake of the underprivileged. ``I'm not here for me,'' he said, adding, ``Neither am I here so that you write good things about me or even so that you can make me famous, but so that I may help others.''

Seagal probably can't get more famous than he is, unless he does what he says he's going to Bangkok to do. One of his teachers has taken ill and Seagal, the master of the healing arts, is going to ``treat him out of a coma''.