The house is clearly being prepared to be vacated soon — carpets are rolled up and stacked against the wall of the drawing room. The furniture is simple, the severity of the room broken by a carved wooden screen separating the dining area, a few Tanjore paintings on one wall, and figurines on the mantelpiece and shelves.

The room personifies the man who walks into it — just retired chief election commissioner (CEC) N. Gopalaswami — wearing a red-bordered veshti (the south Indian dhoti) and a kurta with its sleeves rolled up above the elbows. The trademark red vermilion line — the caste mark of the Iyengar Brahmin community — on his forehead accentuates the austere and stern air about him.

The demeanour is a tad misleading, I discover, as he settles down for what turns out to be a long chat, occasionally tucking one leg under him on the sofa. Midway through the conversation, he gets up to switch off a fan in the dining area that’s been distracting him. The 65-year-old retired bureaucrat has to start on sorting things out and then packing them before leaving the capital for good for Chennai. Amid a blaze of controversy.

It was perhaps all in his stars. When he was secretary-general of the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) in the late 1990s, a friend who dabbled in astrology told him he would rise to be like a cabinet secretary or a judge. In 2004, he became election commissioner (EC) — a post that is equivalent to that of a cabinet secretary and a judge, and has quasi-judicial functions (he became CEC in 2006). Once he joined the commission, he started attending weekend astrology classes conducted by the Astrological Society of India, and even completed four semesters and got a certificate.

So did he foresee the troubled times? “The first thing they teach you is not to read your own horoscope,” he says but admits that his batchmates had predicted this difficult dasha (period).

That’s the time he set the political and constitutional dovecotes aflutter by recommending to the President that election commissioner Navin Chawla (the new CEC) be removed from his post on grounds of “partisanship,” for Chawla is widely perceived to be close to the Gandhi family and the Congress. The CEC’s powers to make such a recommendation as well as the timing — just before his retirement and on the eve of general elections — were both questioned. Then, there was his insistence on an inquiry into Sonia Gandhi accepting a Belgian civilian honour. The Commission had received a petition saying this meant owing allegiance to another country and went against the Constitution, to which elected representatives had to pledge their allegiance.

He refuses to be drawn into all this. “I will speak at an appropriate time, if it becomes necessary.” What about the accusation on television by the editor of The Hindu, N. Ram, that Gopalaswami harboured a deep personal prejudice against Chawla? “That is all rubbish.” But he’s clear that he wouldn’t have done anything differently. “I have no regrets. My conscience is absolutely clear.”

What pains him is getting dubbed an L. K. Advani man. He was home secretary when Advani headed the ministry and was appointed election commissioner by the National Democratic Alliance government. “The rumour mills said I had worked with him when he was information and broadcasting minister in 1977. For the first 25 years of my career, I never had a Delhi posting. The first time I came to know him was in the home ministry. This is just prattle by idle minds.”

Some government or another will always appoint someone to a post, he points out. “That does not mean he has sold his soul to that government.” That’s why he is in favour of a collegium — with ruling and opposition party representatives — selecting the CEC, as is done in the case of the central vigilance commissioner and in the NHRC. “No one can then say this is so-and-so’s man.”

He also wants election commissioners to be barred from joining political parties for 10 years after they retire. Political activity, he adds, is okay. “It is better that they don’t get into politics. But if someone has this uncontrollable itch to do service to the people, let it be as an independent.”

Clearly, the man is a pucca civil servant at heart. Yet, the civil service wasn’t the first career choice for this son of a Neyvelli Lignite Corporation engineer. After graduating in chemistry from St Joseph’s College in Tiruchirapalli, Gopalaswami got his masters degree from Delhi University, bagging a gold medal. He was keen to go abroad for research, but the head of the department scoffed at his plans and told him to do what he wanted to in India. Peer pressure also weighed in and he joined the Gujarat cadre of the Indian Administrative Service in 1966, earning a reputation for being extremely low-profile and upright. He went by the book, but took care not to antagonise anyone or court controversy.

He did manage to antagonise some in the last months of those four decades, but all that’s going to be behind him once he settles in Chennai near his sister and sons, one of whom is in Bangalore. Gopalaswami has some serious post-retirement plans. He’s going to immerse himself in popularising Sanskrit and writing flyers demystifying the scriptures. He already has two to his credit. One is on marriage mantras. He elaborates that the mantra — sakha saptapadi bhava — that the groom recites after taking the seven steps (saptapadi) to solemnise a wedding means that having taken those steps, the bride has become the groom’s friend.

“It is not about becoming a vassal or a slave,” he points out and laments that this concept of marriage enshrined in the scriptures is not being followed.” Gopalaswami had first read up on all the marriage mantras when he got married in 1970. In 1991, when his brother was to get married, he prepared the simple flyer focusing just on the saptapadi — the core of the marriage vows. He later refined it, translated it into Tamil and printed 1,000 copies for distribution.

The other flyer is on the shikshavalli chapter of the Taittiriya Upanishad, which is a convocation address by a guru to a disciple leaving the gurukul, telling him how to conduct himself in the world. Sanskrit flows effortlessly from his lips, as he quotes liberally from the chapter.

Does he too feel Hindu culture is in danger? “I have no answer to this,” he laughs.

But he’s upset over what he calls too much emphasis on English education to the detriment of Indian languages. “I am concerned that people might forget their mother tongues.” He warms to the subject. “Imagine 50 years from now, nobody in Tamil Nadu will read Thirukkural (couplets by saint poet Thiruvalluvar about various aspects of life, which often figure in P. Chidambaram’s budget speeches) or Subramania Bharati (freedom fighter and poet). It is a shame.”

He himself studied in a Tamil medium school in the small town of Mannargudi in Tamil Nadu and admits to having worried about adjusting to English medium in college. “But we had teachers who taught English as it ought to be — as a medium of expression.” English as a functional language is necessary, he says. He has no problems with it being used to teach science and mathematics. “But why should social studies be taught in English and not in Tamil, Gujarati or Bengali?”

Chennai’s music scene will also be beckoning. A Carnatic music aficionado, he decided to learn singing when he was 40 and posted to Baroda and resumed after a 10-year break in Delhi, where he was often seen enjoying himself at concerts.

What about writing a tell-all book? “I have a very healthy scepticism about bureaucrats writing memoirs and then phoning people and saying I have written a book, get your library to buy it.”

That should be music to the ears of many in Delhi.