Spirit and speed

"I believe you must always first treat yourself to the absolute finest and very best that life has to offer. Second best is never good enough... I place great value on aspiration...I drive my motorcycle each day to enjoy that sheer driving pleasure, elan and luxury it holds,” mentions motivational speaker Cyrus Jehangir Sataraval­la, credited by Business India (January 7-20, 2002) as being "the only person in India with a 1,000 cc BMW motorcycle.”

Although happy with his material possession Satar­avalla was quoted in Business India as stating, "For me the BMW and Rolls Royce are not acquisitions but sym­bols from my subconscious to reach beyond the normal set standards.”

"The BMW has the undisputed reputation of being the finest motorcycle in the world; the ultimate tour­ing machine — quiet, reliable, super smooth, very expen­sive...BMWs endure and they command respect as superb machines,” wrote Sataravalla in response to Parsiana’s queries.

Built in 1978 and priced at $4,195 (around Rs 63,000 at that time) according to the Business India report, model R 100 S came to him in 1999 after years of correspondence with the Munich based Bayerische Motoren Werke AG. The com­pany’s historical archives sent him a rider’s manual and technical data with the warning: "Keep them well, they are normally not availa­ble anymore.” They are meant to last a lifetime and to be passed on to the next generation, states another news report.

In one of his missives to Parsiana, Sataravalla puts it succinctly: "I’m a man who passionately be­lieves in the powers within focused thought. What happens to you is never as important as what you tell yourself inside. Your life is not one of chance. It is one of specific choices — decisions made during each ordinary everyday moment...Dreams are meant to come true in the here and now.”

For Sataravalla these words are particularly meaningful for way back in 1977 after a grueling 13-hour life saving surgery his entire large intestine was removed in USA and 15 years later two feet of his small intestine. But the optimist describes the scenario: "This time it was not just life smiling upon me with this great blessing but destiny pointing a direct path I was to traverse. What remained was what counted, my inborn spirit and hidden awesome creative powers...That is the specific domain, that magical realm inside that my seminars focus on, guiding each to awaken to the crackle of that lightning bolt within urging you to strike way beyond temporary limitations, to tune in­stead into an altogether higher plane of awareness.”

After studying at St Stephen’s College in New Delhi he began his vocation as a tea taster in Calcutta in 1979 with Goodricke to be followed by 10 years as a fire extinguisher salesman with Minimax. "Today I set alight and fan that creative fire within people,” mentions Sataravalla who under his Quantum Success banner conducts sessions for clients like Atlas Copco, Bajaj Auto, Dr Beck and Company, Garware Wall Ropes, Kirloskar Brothers, Mahin­dra and Mahindra. He then set out to recommission a shut down tea factory on a desolate hilltop in the Nilgiris where he spent nine months out in the wilds often surviving on wild honey when hunger gnawed, learning what "survival, danger, endurance and commit­ment meant.”

Currently he is engaged 17 hours a day to complete his book Beyond Guts, the hard cover English edition of which is due to be published in April 2002. The feed­back from internationally acclaimed best-selling author Dominique Lapierre, who found the foreword "exciting, warm, touching,” Sataravalla feels is "a wonderful beginning for my coming book.”