Suave, he had the listeners in his pocket in no time and Tagore Theatre's packed hall reverberated with his power-packed rhetoric as he spoke on what they wanted to hear. ``It is a lot easier to preach than to practise. Just as our body needs food everyday, our mind too needs positive thoughts.'' Shiv, who runs his firm, Qualified Learning Systems Inc, in New Jersey, with clientele as varied as Lufthansa and Godrej, was in Chandigarh for a lecture at the Vision 2000, a membership seminar organised by the Lions Club Chandigarh Central. The event was managed by Delhi-based Perfect Relations.

Shiv, who called himself a proud Indian, however pointed out that he felt ashamed and embarrassed when India was declared the seventh most corrupt country in the world. ``Integrity is not having temptations, but overcoming the temptations and doing in spite of them.'' It was an interactive format that he chose and threw a question at the audience, ``How many people in the world, or in the country or even in our community have a vision in life?'' Pat came the answer, ``Very few''. Shiv continued, ``Everybody has a vision but the sad part is that it dies, they never act on it. Vision without action is hallucination and vision with action is conviction. And what is lacking in this country today, and what is needed here, is this conviction''.

Shiv, who spoke very strongly on the lack of professionalism in our country, said, ``Once, in Pune, mediapersons asked me which management style will work in India. But in a country where the deciding factor is whose son or daughter are you or to which centre of power you belong, what management style can work?'' On our independence and the present scenario, Shiv was very eloquent.

``It is never the activity of rascals that destroys the society, but the inactivity of good people, the spinelessness of them, that destroys the society. You want to abolish organised crime? Abolish the Parliament.'' Shiv's lecture was peppered with jokes in fluent Punjabi that had the audience in splits. For, after all, his grandparents came from the Punjab of pre-Partition era though he was born in Dhanbad in Bihar and did his schooling and college in Delhi. Taking the help of old verses, Shiv gave an inside out of the human psyche, ``Everything is written in our manuscripts, on management and leadership qualities. But when it is translated and offered in English, one becomes a consultant. And when it is spoken with an accent, he becomes an American-returned consultant''.

For Shiv also did not say anything new. On life's choices and compromises, he said, ``Certain things are beyond human control. We cannot choose the cards dealt to us but we can definitely choose how to play the game.'' And that has been precisely his winning formula, telling others how to win. And the poster he presented to the Lions this afternoon had the same message: ``Winners do not do different things, they do things differently.'' His best-seller, "You Can Win'', also reflects this: ``Circumstances cannot make a man, but can reveal the man to himself. How in the same circumstances, one breaks the record and the others break themselves''?

Shiv quoted extensively from the life of Guru Nanak Dev and zeroed in on what is missing in our society: ``Stand up for the honest person.'' And on another missing characteristic nowadays: ``If you can sleep when your neighbour is being intimidated, then the next number is yours. And when your number comes, your neighbour will be sleeping. For how can you expect help from others when you don't do the same''?