Lalit Modi: ‘Someone else took SAT exams for me to pass college entrance… was born with diamond spoon'
Modi was interviewed by former Australian cricketer Michael Clarke for the Beyond23 Cricket Podcast, where the former IPL Commissioner opened up about the league, his personal life and many other things.
Modi started by talking about his early school life.
'I was born with a diamond spoon. Not a silver spoon, not a gold spoon, but with a diamond spoon. And so I always grew up having everything. I went to boarding school at the age of five. It was tough. I went to seven different boarding schools, by the way,' Modi told Clarke in the podcast.
'It was very tough. My grandfather was very strict. My father was very strict. I came up with a very strict upbringing.'
Modi also revealed that he had actually paid someone else to take the SATs (Scholastic Assessment Test, which is a standardized test used in the USA for college admissions) for him.
'I was always the black sheep of the family and I always broke every rule in the book because I always wanted more and more and more. It wasn't easy, you know? I went to seven different schools. I finally ended up in Delhi and I flunked the 12th exam. But I fudged myself because I wanted to go to America, because I wanted to go there and party. I had to get into college. And I got into every college. Somebody did my SATs for me. I got 1560 on 1600. It was my name and his picture. We got away with it in those days. You can't today. When I went to college again I went to a place in North Carolina called Duke University. I was probably one of the very few Indians that were there and I never lived away from home as such outside the country. I was in boarding school so I knew how to make my bed. I knew how to live and look after myself from the age of five. But what made a difference was you went from a world in India to a totally developed first world America,' Modi added.
Modi said that in his early days in university he would face questions about life back in India. He said he would be asked if there were vehicles in India or people used bullock carts.
He said he had learnt to look the other way in the face of such derogatory questions.
'I got used to that, being picked on. I wasn't very well built. I had to fend for myself and I didn't have bodyguards and things like that in those days. So best thing was just give in and look the other way and move on and that taught me a lot,' he said.
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