It was a revelation to hear that close to a billion people around the world had no access to electricity. It was harder realising that 400 million of these lived in India. His efforts, and those of the organisation he heads (TERI), to provide solar lanterns to those hapless millions have been well documented and acclaimed. His achievements in the many important roles he plays have been recognised with 14 doctorates and a plethora of prestigious awards including the Padma Vibhushan, but the man wears his accomplishments lightly.

I caught up with him when he was receiving yet another award in Mumbai a few days ago. I could see that he was becoming synonymous with the Green movement and was really the unofficial brand ambassador for everyone who wanted to save Planet Earth for future generations.

So what were his dreams as a youngster and how far had he achieved them, I asked. “When I started my career, there were limited choices. Engineering, civil services, medicine …” Being fond of Physics and Maths (not Chemistry, he emphasised), it seemed natural for him to go in for Engineering. He thought, at that stage, that he would have liked to run an engineering organisation at some stage of his life. Yet, he stresses that the choices did not come from within. That was just what the environment offered.

As an engineer, the young Pachauri quickly climbed to head an outfit that had 700 people and was manufacturing diesel locomotives. “I worked round the clock,” he reminisces, and very often opted to do the night shift where I could go around making sure nobody slept on the job.” That particular job offered him a worthwhile challenge and he learned to work well with men and machines, making a name for himself and setting up production control systems.

“Yet, there was a burning desire within to do something intellectually stimulating,” says Pachauri. His Professor, a certain Arthur Flynn, encouraged him and made him realise he was good at Maths. He then went abroad and while studying to be a post-graduate in Engineering, he took a course in Economics. This was to be the flint that sparked a new desire in him and resulted in him obtaining a doctorate in engineering and in economics. The experience from being a sahib at the diesel locomotive works to a student in a foreign land had a great impact on him. It taught him to deal with changing circumstances with fortitude and patience.

“Totally extraneous factors determine your path,” he says philosophically. Wanting to augment his income, he set out to be a research assistant, drew up a plan on systems dynamics modelling for a power station in Carolina and not just got his research grant but also an entry into the fascinating field of energy. This was to lead on to his interest in the environment, the impact of energy on the environment and then climate change itself.

“Way back in 1988, when I highlighted the effects of climate change at an elite gathering in Luxembourg, everyone thought I had gone mad,” he says, smiling, as he looks back on his wonderfully eventful career. Yet, events overtook him and when the seminal IPCC report was presented many years later it went on to fuel a global debate which brought him international acclaim. “The Nobel Prize was a complete surprise,” he says. He only believed his team had actually won it when heI was told that the Norwegian Ambassador wanted to call on him to give him a letter.

So are there any dreams unfulfilled, I wonder aloud, almost rhetorically, expecting an indulgent smile. Instead, a visibly animated Pachauri straightens up in his seat and very seriously begins to dole out a list which makes me gaze in amazement. “I started life wanting to become a poet. That is unfulfilled. I wanted to become a cricketer. I trained with Dattu Phadkar, but the demands of academics weighed heavily. I wanted to learn how to fly, and, in fact, took some lessons, in Varanasi, but that too had to be stopped for reasons beyond my control. I want to be an actor,” he says, eyes twinkling. “Any offers from Bollywood?” I venture. “I'm still waiting,” he says with an infectious laugh. I recall that this author of 23 serious tomes is also a romantic at heart who has authored a work of fiction called Return to Almora. And to imagine that he wrote this book on all those long flights he took crisscrossing the globe evangelising world governments about the benefits of a greener way of life.

Meanwhile, he advises everyone to keep up a sense of excitement in anything they are doing. “Our objective in work should not be to maximise production, sales and profit, but to maximise the joy one gets out of working.”

Now that's sound advice from someone who still fills every unrelenting hour with sixty minutes of work and joy.