NEW DELHI: Nobody, the man famously said, travels on the road to success without a puncture or two.
Navjot Singh Sidhu would know that.
He has changed tyres successfully, and, after today's Supreme Court judgment finding him for a fatal road rage case but sparing him a jail term, the former cricketer seems ready for another turn on a journey that has been full of twists -- and occasional flats.
A chameleon-like batsman, a no-holds-barred commentator, a comedy show judge and a shrewd politician, Sidhu is the quintessential man for all seasons.
From his long sixes, that earned him the moniker "Sixer Sidhu", to his inimitable laugh which inspired many a meme on social media, the 54-year-old minister in Punjab has seldom been out of the news.
Born on October 20, 1963, in Patiala, the Punjab city famous for its Pag, Peg and Salwar, not to forget the legendary jutti, Sidhu perhaps would always be recognised first as a cricketer, despite his dismal start.
Called a "stroke-less wonder" in his 1983 debut, Sidhu announced his arrival with four half-centuries in the 1987 World Cup.
But it wasn't just the fearless stroke-making that defined him.
The 11-hour vigil for his only Test double hundred (a 201 against the West Indies in 1997) showed he could be tenacious or audacious depending on what was demanded of him.
And nobody -- certainly not the spinners -- had any idea just which Sidhu would turn up on a given day.
It wasn't only his cricket that was quirky; the man himself was as unpredictable as a storm.
The right-hander walked out midway through a tour of England in 1996, crying persecution after being dropped from the ODIs because of poor form, leaving the team management simply startled.
It is this unpredictability that continues to define him, nearly two decades after he hung up his bat in 1999.
He first took this boisterous side of his to the commentary box, adding a dash of outrageous humour to drive home his cricketing points.
From likening statistics to bikinis and wickets to wives, the references he drew were flamboyant -- and often puzzling -- but carved a niche for him in the commentary box and his remarks came to be known as 'Sidhuisms'.
"Experience is the comb life gives you when you are bald," he said once.
"If my aunty had a moustache, then she would be my uncle," he said on another memorable occasion.
If his utterances got him the attention behind the mic, a signature laugh, neon turbans and quirky Urdu poetry did the trick during his stint as a judge on stand-up comedy shows on TV.
He also made some guest appearances in Punjabi and Hindi films but it was television where he looked truly at ease.
'Chhaa gaye guru', 'thoko taali', and 'chak de phatte, napp de killi' were some of his contributions to the Indian television's absurd but unforgettable one-liners in addition to his loud laugh, the consistency and frequency of which became a running joke in itself.
All this while he was a sitting Lok Sabha MP for the BJP from Amritsar and was often criticised for not showing up enough in his constituency.
However, it made no difference to his results as he won two tenures (2004 and 2009) from the seat.
But the cricketer who joined politics after, he had said in an interview, Atal Bihari Vajpayee invited him to do so, turned away from the BJP once he was asked to vacate his seat for BJP leader Arun Jaitley before the 2014 general elections.
Claiming to be fine with the decision initially, Sidhu soon began to voice his displeasure over the decision.
The BJP made him a Rajya Sabha member in 2016 but still failed to pacify him.
Sidhu resigned from the upper house within months of taking an oath and joined the Congress just before the Punjab Assembly elections in 2017.
There was speculation that he would go with the Aam Aadmi Party and Sidhu had even formed a party with former hockey captain Pargat Singh but, in the end, he decided to align himself with an established political outfit.
Elected to the Punjab Assembly from Amritsar East, he was made the minister of tourism and cultural affairs by the Amarinder Singh-led Congress government.
But like many other temperamental public figures, Sidhu also had his run-ins with the law.
The darkest chapter would easily be the 1988 road rage case.
Sidhu got into a brawl with a 65-year-old man called Gurnam Singh who had objected to the cricketer's car being parked in the middle of a road in Patiala.
Sidhu hit Singh, who died in a hospital.
Convicted of voluntarily causing hurt by the Supreme Court today, Sidhu was, however, spared a jail term.
The verdict adds -- or rather closes -- another eventful chapter in his chequered life, which also includes allegations of income tax norm violations.
The case had earlier come up in the Punjab and Haryana High Court, which sentenced the cricketer to three years in jail in 2006.
Cartoonist Rajneesh had then published a strip where a character was seen telling another that he felt sorry for Sidhu.
"Guys I feel sorry for are the ones who would be locked up with him for three years," the other replied.
It is Sidhu, though, who has had the last laugh.
And he is laughing all the way, as he changes tyre after tyre.