by Parveen Chopra

Lounging in a huge, leather upholstered easy chair away from his work desk, with ample sunlight coming through large windows in his Noida factory office, R.P. Khosla, 68, is a picture of serenity. A synthesizer makes its presence felt when he plays some old Hindi film tunes for us. The pressure of heading a marble import-export business with an annual turnover of Rs 120 million doesn't show. Khosla ascribes his blissful state of contentment to the spiritual principles he follows and the fact that he delegates responsibility.

The laws Khosla follows are simple. "Honesty and hard work pay. Do your work as if it belongs to God. Where is the question of stress then? Be compassionate, and get blessings from everybody, including your staff and customers. Customer satisfaction is important because the real sales start after the sale."

However, he feels that doing business ethically is difficult—the inspector rule still continues in India.

Talking about managing people, he says all it requires is some caring and attention—somebody needs financial help or another employee is in bad health… The employer should keep in touch with his employees' welfare and do whatever is required. Khosla himself has healed even his lower level staff, right there in his office.

He has been doing free healing for almost 14 years. He started way back with Mata Nirmala Devi's Sahaja Yoga, then moved on to reiki and pranic healing , and eventually siddha healing founded by Swami Hardas. Since he has moved higher up in the healers' hierarchy, Khosla doesn't need to do individual, in-person healings any more. While healing, you get well yourself, he says and recounts a couple of case histories where it has worked.

Khosla believes that although spiritual laws work, we don't always know how, somewhat like homeopathy. God helps you if you pray for help. He is quite at home with New Age authors, books and concepts like creative visualization and affirmations. He explains how affirmations work: "You say the affirmation and it goes all around the universe before finding a receptor (like the radio antenna), and your wish gets fulfilled."

To counter stress, he uses the Silva Method , going to the alpha level for a couple of minutes a few times every day. But, he adds, if you have the proper thoughts and actions, the entire day is like being in a state of meditation. For office executives who are mostly working at computers, he suggests doing so with unfocussed, dreamy eyes with frequent blinking much like children do. A fixed gaze, he says, keeps you in the beta brain-wave pattern.

Khosla's philosophy in life is fail-safe. "Why worry over losing something that doesn't belong to you." His credo is 'Har haal mein wah-wah' (bravo in all situations, even adversity). He firmly believes that: "We are the custodians; the wealth or business doesn't belong to us… We get and we forget. He (God) gives and forgives."

But no, he does not impose his views upon his son, Deepak, and nephew, Vineeth, who are managing things at Margra. "They have their own space…" is how he puts it. Which is not to say that Khosla approves of some of his son's traits—like a short temper and ambition. This, he surmises, may be behind Deepak's recent health problem. But Deepak ascribed these to a vaastu defect and is now redoing the office interiors!

Queried about social responsibility and consciousness, Khosla talks about tithing—giving a certain percentage of income to charity. Some religions prescribe 10 per cent, others 1 per cent. But Khosla believes that even if it is a small amount, it should be given.

Why should one give? "Because there is so much you take from the universe. Even if you consider as mundane a chore as having breakfast, you will note that the wheat for your bread has been produced by some farmer in Punjab, cheese by a dairy in Gujarat, India, and so on. Money is not necessarily the only thing to give—you can give love, appreciation, your time. Even though what you give comes back to you manifold, giving itself is a pleasure. But charity should be gupt (secret)."

Peace begins when ambition ends, Khosla says. It is okay to be ambitious but if you spend all your life regretting what you didn't get, then it's a waste. Money is okay to the extent that you are comfortable. It is not an end in itself, but a means to peace and relaxation. Money should become incidental to business, then there is no stress. Just as the goal of war is peace, the goal of business is leisure. And that's exactly what he's enjoying these days.

Khosla concludes with a teaching story: Henry Ford passed by a fisherman trying to catch fish with an old-fashioned, torn net. Ford asked: "Why don't you buy a trawler to make things easy?"

"I don't have money to buy one," the fisherman said.
"Then you can take a loan," Ford said helpfully.
"Okay. I buy a trawler, then what?"
"Then you'll catch lots of fish, make lots of money."
"Then what?"
"Then you can buy four more trawlers."
"Then?"
"Then you can hire people to work for you and you can relax."
"But that's what I'm doing now-relaxing!" said the smiling fisherman.