Dispensing magic mantra for happiness and peace

Ratanjit Singh Sondhe

Ratanjit Singh Sondhe. Yes, that's the name. Ask anyone in the corporate world and he would tell you of the man from Bikaner who built a multi-million dollar polymer empire, he would sing paeans of this Capricornian's work ethos where head honchos of the company did not flaunt gilt tags, instead, solemnly carried forward the company Poly Carb's leitmotif of "adding the highest value in every transaction and thought".

Try dropping that name again in a medley of stressed souls and someone would jump with an epithet: Oh! Mr Stress Free, the one with the magic TEA mantra for happiness and peace. Oh! He has changed my life. I listened to his radio program and all my stress vanished in a blink.

From another corner you might hear this joyous refrain. Entrepreneur. Motivational man. That's Ratanjit Singh Sondhe. I thought I had learnt all I needed to know about the man who stepped into the US in 1968 for a doctoral degree in polymer chemistry.

But with that one click on www.ratanjit.com, all my puny perceptions went for a toss. It was the dropdown menu that corrected me. Entrepreneur. Motivational man. Wait, you ain't heard anything yet. Author. Speaker. Radio & TV personality. Consultant. The man who has an antidote to stress - from his magic hat he can pull out stress-free way of thinking, stress-free living, de-stress quickies with daily thoughts, a custom profile to with tips to reduce stress…

Yes, there is the TEA, the recipe for more blissful living that had the Americans call him Mr Stress Free. With two tomes (TEA: The Recipe for Stress-free Living and The Secret of Our Ultimate Success) already on the book shelves of millions, Sondhe is about to launch his third book, Soul Leadership, towards the end of this year.

In his latest book Sondhe, a BITS-Pilani alumnus shows how human weaknesses such as greed, lust, power, vanity have only created perceived leaders. True leaders, Sondhe emphasizes, do not focus on good deeds, but become goodness itself.

Interestingly, Sondhe takes no credit for the one-liners and motivational stories that he spews on the countless radio and television programs that get aired in nearly 150 countries. His shows are unrehearsed, unscripted.

He does not need the script. For he sees himself as the "manager of the resources of the divine;" he thinks he is merely a medium. His thoughts come straight from the divine. Spirituality, for him, is a way of life, a thought-process that he imbibed from his pious mother who knew not just the Guru Granth Sahib by rote but could quote from scriptures of other religions.

"My mother always laid importance on wisdom; she taught me that knowledge comes from reading, but wisdom lies within. And it is that wisdom that one needs to seek," says Sondhe, who having sold Poly Crab, now sits on the board of several universities and takes up consulting assignments.

However, his pet peeve remains stress. But Sondhe does not dissect it with a scalpel or looks for maverick neurons in the brain, for him stress is "simply a disconnect with your own self". He breaks the human existence into three components - human body, intellect and You; with the body merely being the home that You live in.

To this disconnect with the self, Sondhe adds another folly - there is live wire that connects atma (soul) to parmatma (god), but in our mundane existence we have forgotten to compute it completely, to feel it, to realize it. At the root of all stress is the vile ego, which in reality is "the absence of truth. Ego is a misunderstanding of your own self," says Sondhe, who now lives in Aurora, Ohio, in an 18-acre home through which a river gurgles by.

Quite like a clinician, Sondhe knows what ails the world and even has a prescription. "You have to see the divinity in another. You have to add the highest value in every transaction and thought. You should not be judgmental.

Just help the other become better." Not, as he says in his forthcoming book Soul Leadership, by being perceived leaders, but by "understanding and realigning ourselves to the omnipresent fundamental truth that exists within all of us."

Wherever you go, don't just scrape dirt off your shoe on the doormat, before you ring the doorbell or extend your hand for a warm handshake, think what value you can add to that moment, that being. Do not be judgmental.

Not only would it make you feel better, it would silently vanquish your own stress and subtly raise your confidence to a level where you would start living independent of crutches like wealth, beauty, designation, youth… For the wisdom lies within you. For divinity has found an abode in you.

Try what Ratanjit Singh Sondhe says. It works. He is Mr Stress Free. You might soon become one.   
(www.deepblueink.com)

Preeti Verma Lal