What really makes this charismatic motivation guru tick? Bhupesh Bhandari finds out

"He is a busy man and travels a lot — it is very difficult to catch hold of him," the public relations (PR) agent told me when I requested a meeting with Shiv Khera, "international educator and motivator." Nevertheless, the confirmation came through in less than ten minutes. We were slated to meet for lunch at Bukhara, a restaurant specialising in frontier cuisine at the Maurya Sheraton, two days later.

This was to be my first meeting with Khera. I had two days to call up friends and get a fix on the man. What I was told was that my guest was an enthusiastic talker and was not averse to publicity. "There is nobody better than him in the sunrise industry of talking," a friend's assessment was still ringing in my ears as I reached the Maurya on a sultry afternoon.

I spotted Khera at the Maurya lobby, deep in conversation with a hotel employee. Dressed in a pair of green trousers and a green T-shirt, his red-rimmed glasses were resting on the bridge of his nose, while his hand was on the other man's shoulder.

My approach terminated the interface and Khera and I promptly set off on a short march to the Bukhara. On the way, he was greeted by waiters from the coffee shop and I couldn't help commenting on his popularity amongst the hotel staff. Had he taken them through one of his courses? He merely chuckled softly.

"Smoking or non-smoking?" queried the waiter, wearing a loose Pakhtoon outfit, wanting to know what our choice of tables would be. "One where we can talk," came the reply. And we were shown to a corner table.

I set the ball rolling by mentioning that I had known his PR agent for almost a decade. "Good. Then you must take our three-day course," Khera suggested. I made a mental note of telling the agent that a decade of acquaintance with her needed to be countered with three days of motivational syrup, a la Khera! Our coolers arrived — nimbu pani for me and masala lassi for him.

Khera speaks with an American accent. (While fluent in Hindi and Punjabi, he finds it difficult to wax philosophical in any language other than English.) After all, he migrated to Canada way back in 1975. "Our family was based in Dhanbad (now in Jharkhand) and we used to own coal mines employing over 1,000 people. Then in 1973, the government decided to nationalise the mines and we were on the streets," Khera said as we crunched through the papads.

This took Khera and his wife to Canada in 1975, where he started his working life washing cars. Then Khera moved on to selling vacuum cleaners and insurance. It was while he was selling insurance that he first got a glimpse of what motivational talking entailed. He got into this business a few years later when he had migrated to the US. "I began by holding sessions inside prisons," Khera disclosed. Soon, he had a thriving practice. Some two years ago, he sold his US practice comprising some 400 clients.

How does he compare himself with Deepak Chopra, the other New Age Indian guru in the US? "There is no comparison. He is a doctor, I am only a B. Com, a high school fail," Khera said disarmingly. "He is more into healing. We work more with corporates," he added on a more serious note. This explains why, unlike Chopra, Khera does not have a legion of celebrities following him.

Khera does not accord much respect to high-profile degrees. "It only gets you your first job. After that, it is your own work that matters," he said, adding: "The lack of a degree is actually an advantage. If you are an engineer or a doctor, there is only one job you can do. But if you don't have a degree, you can do anything."

Success, according to Khera, is all about doing things differently. "Winners don't do different things, they do things differently," Khera said. I replayed these words three times in my mind to get their full import, yet the words sounded vaguely familiar. It was only later in the day when I was going through the publicity material that he had handed over to me that I learnt that Khera, in fact, has the trademark on this quote. All Shiv Khera paraphernalia — pens, mugs and bags — display this prominently.

In fact, Khera has 37 such quotes ("It is never the activity of rascals that destroys a society, but always the inactivity of the good people that does it" "If we are not a part of the solution, then we are the problem," to sample a few) out of which one is published every day along with his photograph in a leading English daily. "It is a part of our Country First initiative," Khera disclosed.

As a part of the initiative, Khera is next planning to file a public interest litigation that all ballot papers should include the option "none of the above" for voters. "There is a problem of credibility in our country. This is one way of correcting it," he said.

Our lunch platters had come: an assortment of kebabs for me and a selection of tandoor-fried vegetables for my guest. As we dug into the food, I asked him if he too had a guru. Yes, and his name is Norman Vincent Peale, the author of The Power of Positive Thinking. In fact, it was Peale who introduced Khera to the world of motivational speaking. "It was in Canada. There were 400 of us. He asked us if we wanted to be free of all worries. We all said yes. Then he said that if we stepped out to a cemetery, he could introduce us to some people who had no worries. As long as there is life, there are bound to be problems."

While on the theme of motivational gurus, I asked him if he knew that Dale Carnegie, the author of the celebrated book Stop Thinking and Start Living, committed suicide out of frustration. Depression, Khera corrected me.

Till now, Khera had deftly sidestepped my queries regarding the size of his business — all three times. "How much money have you made?" I decided it was time to be blunt. "It isn't much," he said, after thinking for a while. What is the worth of the Shiv Khera brand, I wanted to know. "I am planning to get it evaluated soon," he said. "Ernst & Young is doing the audit for us. Maybe I will ask it to evaluate the brand too."

Khera offers personalised services — he conducts all the workshops himself. So what will happen to the business after him? "We are trying to institutionalise it. We are training people who can hold workshops on my behalf. We are also putting the programmes on CDs. And there are the books. Even if I am not there, these books will be there for 150 years," he said.

Khera's first book, You Can Win has already sold 750,000 copies in at least half-a-dozen languages. He is now working on two more: You Can Lead and There Are No Free Lunches. I could relate to that: I signalled for the cheque to pay for ours.