But Shetty places a premium on compassion. "If I am given a choice I would like to treat only poor patients. But unfortunately the economic reality does not allow me to do that," says Shetty, who has an entire department that looks after patients for free. 

Shetty throws some heart-stopping figures at you. He says there are nearly 250,000 people who need heart surgery every year in India. But only 50,000 get it done while the rest remain shunted out because of the high costs.

 Heart surgery isn’t for the faint hearted — it can result in missed beats for those about to go under the scalpel, even the tough-as-oak ones. But Shetty takes the gamble out of the game. He has introduced the concept of assembly-line heart surgery, which aims at not only reducing the cost of surgery but also achieving zero mortality. Robotic perfection, you may call it, but you wouldn’t want that scalpel to slip even a micro-millimeter. People like Shetty are making a difference in a field where the government has virtually abdicated its responsibility. 

Cardiac care — or for that matter any healthcare — is at a premium in India. So you wait achievement has been his work with children. He operates free for kids below 12, and of his 13,000 operations in a career spanning 16 years, over 7,000 operations have been on the young ones.

Shetty’s list of achievements is long. He is the first heart surgeon in India to venture into neonatal open-heart surgery. He performed the first open-heart surgery in the world to close a hole with the help of a microchip camera. He also used an artificial heart for the first time in India.

Much of the action that Shetty sees happens at the world class Narayana Hrudayalaya, where more than 30 surgeries are performed every day. "We give high quality medical care at a low cost," says the serial award-winner. 

Thirty per cent of patients at the hospital are from abroad. They come from Bangladesh, Pakistan, Mauritius, the Middle East and even from African nations. His mission is to make affordable surgery widely available by creating a chain of heart hospitals in every state in India to serve the working class. 

For Shetty, the dream began early. As a 10-year-old, he had a dream that he would one day be a heart surgeon. Growing up in the coastal town of Mangalore, Shetty used to be fascinated by the vastness of the sea and was determined to cross it. 

After training in general surgery at Mangalore’s Kasturba Medical College, the intrepid young man proceeded to the UK for training, eventually working at London’s Guy’s Hospital from 1983-1989.

 Back from England in 1989, he established the B.M. Birla Heart Research Centre in Kolkata for the Birlas. The city attracted him because he wanted to be with his idol, Mother Teresa. He treated the Mother, especially during her last days. Perhaps some of that spirituality rubbed off.

 But charity does not end at home. He now wants to put India on the world medical map: not as a disease prone nation, but as a solutions provider. "If we can make giant strides in the infotech area, why not in health? We have the best doctors in the world," says Shetty, wondering what the fuss is all about.

Shetty has taken his expertise to nations far and wide through telemedicine. His Narayana Hrudayalaya is already one of the biggest telemedicine centers in the world, catering to 19 countries, exporting its expertise to wherever it is required. 

Says the nifty surgeon, "What we did not have earlier was the money to build institutions to get equipment, which we have now. It is matter of time before we build more world-class hospitals." Spoken straight from the heart, one might add.