Friday, February 26, 2010

Cinderella’s story

There was an eerie expectant silence at the railway station. About a hundred people had gathered and were waiting for the train to arrive. Granny was also among them, sitting on a bench, head resting on a cane, thinking about that night before little Cinderella had left for boarding school, when she had told her the story of her namesake. The words were still fresh in her mind and now echoed in her ears as if little Cinderella was saying it out loud…..“But I already have nice clothes and good shoes, how will I get the fairy godmother or the charming prince at the end of the story?? I too want a story of my own, and you will have to tell it to other children.” Granny smiled despite herself at the memory and wiped a tear from the corner of her eye.

Cinderella - her charming, chirpy, mischievous brat of a granddaughter was returning home today after ten years. She had called a few days ago to tell granny about her latest adventure. Like every Saturday night, she had sneaked out of her dorm with her friends Alice and Jessica, after their fourth roommate, Betty, who was the school prefect, had fallen asleep. The three were going towards their spot in the woods where they went every week, with no more purpose than the morbid excitement of defying the school rules, when they heard another set of footsteps and a dragging sound nearby. Cinderella and Alice, with their ever present curiosity, started walking towards the sound. Jessica told them not to, but they wouldn’t listen and kept on.

After some time, they saw a man putting a dead body in a freshly dug grave. Both the girls panicked and were bewildered at first and thought of running back to school. But Cinderella felt that the killer should not be spared and it would be too late till they reached the school or the police. Alice thought it was a really stupid idea for two girls to try and confront a man, who was so obviously dangerous, but relented when she saw Cinderella’s resolve; and went up with her to face the killer. He startled on seeing them and was immobilized for a moment, but soon recollected himself and pointed a gun at Cinderella. This was not entirely unexpected, but they hadn’t really thought about weapons till then. She didn’t bat an eyelid, (or that’s what she had told granny anyway) and kept on walking towards him - the man renewed his threats and waved the gun, but still she didn’t stop. Alice thought she had gone insane and just stood there rooted to the ground. At last, when Cinderella got threateningly close, the man could hold no longer and clicked the revolver.

Miraculously, the gun didn’t go off, and at that precise moment, Jessica came up from behind the man and hit him on his head with a log. He went down and the girls rushed back to school to report the incident. Before leaving, Cinderella took the revolver with her as her adventure souvenir and convinced the others to omit the gun details from their narration to the authorities.

Everyone at school praised the girls for their bravery; however the principal also reprimanded them for their escapade. They were awarded at the Sunday mass and even the Reverend preached a sermon on courage that day. Betty was a little upset with her roommates for keeping her out of their secret and taking away all the glory. So the girls decided to give her a live recap of the events of the night. On returning to their dorm, they arranged for the role play and Alice took on the role of the killer. To make it more real, Cinderella handed her the gun they had brought back. They even made a makeshift grave using pillows and covers, and started acting out the confrontation scene. Cinderella kept approaching Alice, who kept mock threatening her and finally pulled the trigger. As fate had it, this time, the gun did fire.

Everyone at the railway station, dressed in mourning black, stood solemnly as the train approached. As the coffin was taken out, granny thought, “Welcome home, my darling, now you have a story too, and I will have to tell it to everyone. Only that, not every Cinderella story has a happy end.”

Friday, February 5, 2010

My Toastmaster's speech 2 - "Writing Effective Reviews"

Its called "Organize Your Speech"

Good Afternoon friends. I am here to present my second prepared speech and the topic is "Writing Effective Reviews"

What is a review? By definition, it means a critical examination of something - now that something could be a book, a movie, a music album, a consumer product - just about anything. And by this definition, all of us are inherent reviewers. There are so many times when we give our feedback on many things for the benefit of friends and family. But there are some reviews that stay in mind and help us while deciding whether to buy or use a particular product or not - and why does this happen - due to the effectiveness of the review.

To illustrate, I would take the example of a book and try to explain how to go about writing its effective review. It’s a book that I read recently called The Audacity of Hope - the second book authored by Barack Obama, who now happens to be the President of the USA. If you noticed, I just made the introductory line of my review by mentioning the USP of the book, the name of its author. This means, your review should begin with the specialty of the book, could be its name, its storyline, plot or the fact that it has been adapted into a successful movie or that it was on the bestseller list for so many weeks.

Next comes the theme of the book along with its writing style, and how it is different from other books of the same genre. The Audacity of Hope is basically about politics - about the world in general and US in particular. It gives us a glimpse of the history of American politics, its current situation and dreams of the future. More importantly, it gives us an insight into the mindset of that person who is sitting on the hottest chair of the world as of now. The language is simple and easy to understand, and what makes it interesting is the author’s vivid description of his experiences while election campaigns, of being a senator of the opposition party, of being an African American amongst the predominantly white populace.

After outlining the theme and the writing style, we may write about the plot of the story and major characters if it is a fictional work. Otherwise, we can write something about the organization of the book. Like the Audacity of Hope is organized in 9 chapters ranging from republicans vs. democrats, the American constitution, their value system, religion, racism and the world beyond their borders. The final chapter is about Obama’s family, how they were his support throughout his career and how does he balance his personal and professional lives. Seems hard to believe, but even the President of USA has one.

Having so written about the book’s organization, we are now left with the conclusion of our review - and that is the tricky part. In the conclusion, you have to give your opinion about it without enforcing it on the reader. In this case I would write something like - all in all, The Audacity of hope is a good read for people who are interested in world politics and current affairs, even if they are not so much into non-fiction. But if you are looking for facts, figures or how Barack Obama reached the White House, you would be disappointed.

So, to summaries our book review process, we started off with an introduction mentioning some specialty of the book, then came the theme, writing style, plot, characters and organization. In the end we wrote the conclusion in such a way that it would help the reader decide whether the book is for him or not.

And now as the conclusion of this speech, I would like to inform you all that the Livewire team has decided to include a review section in the newsletter, wherein we request you all to write effective reviews and we are hoping to get a huge response - after all, I just dedicated my second speech to it, didn’t I? :-)

This speech took 7 minutes, body language was good, but rate of speech was again high and stresses and pauses were not effective. The topic was appreciated.

Wednesday, February 3, 2010

My Toastmaster's speech 1

Its called "Ice Breaker"

Here goes my speech -

Good Afternoon friends. I am here to present my first prepared speech “The Ice Breaker”, in which one is supposed to tell the group about oneself. But I am going to deviate a little from this standard practice. I am not going to tell you anything about myself. I am not going to tell you that I belong to this city of Indore and have never been really away from home except for my three months onsite. I am not going to tell you that I am a computer engineering graduate and am about to complete 4 years of work experience in Java/J2EE technologies in this company as well as in the IT industry. I won’t tell you have I have been tagged as “intelligent” all my life and how badly I hate that tag. I will also not tell you what degree of a dreamy person I am and how I like to be engrossed in fictional books whenever I find time. I will not disclose why I decided to put on braces on my teeth at this point in life and absolutely ruined my once impeccable pronunciation. And I am certainly not telling how I trembled when I was about to jump from a plane 11000 feet high up in the air while sky diving and finally, I wont tell you how nervous I am right at this moment.

What I am really going to tell you is a story. A story of a boy - called Shantanu – and his family, an ordinary ensemble of people turned extraordinary by circumstances. So, who is this Shantanu? Let me tell you right away, he is not a fictional character - he is very much a real person who is currently doing his graduation in commerce. The story starts some 20 years back from now, when Shantanu was born. It was a normal birth and just like 50% of children born do, Shantanu took to jaundice right after his birth. Only that his jaundice went unnoticed for a week and the doctor was alarmed when Shantanu’s mother pointed out how yellow he looked. Apparently, the disease had reached such a severe stage that it could be cured only by phototherapy or light treatment and that too, only to save his life. There could be side effects leading to any kind of disability from blindness to cerebral palsy. That’s how Shantanu survived and was brought home by a set of extremely anxious parents. They did not yet know what was lying in wait for them.

As time passed, they kept on praying that everything be all right, but gradually discovered things. They confirmed that Shantanu could hear, see learn and understand things around him because he pointed out objects like fan, light, etc when asked to, but using his eyes only - he could not use his hands - both his hands. He could not use his torso and legs even, as he did not turn on his sides or crawl when the right age came. When they took him to a physiotherapist, he told him it was called cerebral palsy - which meant their son would have poor coordination in his limbs, irregular and abnormal movement patterns or spasticity, difficulty with balance, very tense muscles, he would not be able to sit or stand or move around in any way - and that it had no cure. They were shattered.

Their grief passed through all five stages - first there was denial - they refused to accept it as fact that something like this can happen to their child. They went to the best neurologists, surgeons, Acupressure experts and what not. They did Reiki, Magnet Therapy, Homeopathy, Naturopathy, and Sleep Therapy - but all to no avail. Then came the second stage - Anger. But that quickly passed. Third was bargaining - bargaining with God - they were ready to do anything only if God by some miracle could set things straight. Obviously it did not work. It depressed them - thoroughly - the fourth stage.

By this time Shantanu was six years old and was regularly doing physiotherapy to strengthen his muscles and speech therapy to improve his talking ability - because he was not able to speak legibly. It was then that Dr Kothari - his physiotherapist - took a session with his parents and made them cross over into the fifth stage of their grief - acceptance. He told them that this is how it was going to be, and would remain. Shantanu would never be physically independent. But there was a treasure hidden in that crippled body - his mind. Normally, with his kind of cerebral palsy, children are mentally retarded, but Shantanu had an above average IQ - a miracle of its kind.

So they accepted fate - particularly his mother - and she led Shantanu on his real journey - that is, education. She taught him on his own in the beginning, but later thought that he might be feeling left out when he saw his elder sibling going to school everyday, and tried to get him admitted to a school. But that was no easy job - the so called learned, highly educated people responsible for shaping the country’s future told her that such children had special schools and should be educated there. She tried to explain that Shantanu does not belong to that category - he was normal as far as mental abilities are concerned. But people did not listen to her. Some 4 or 5 tries later, a person running a small private school agreed to take Shantanu in - on some conditions of his own. In this way, Shantanu started attending a proper school in the proper way. He could not write so initially all his exams were either conducted orally or his mother or sibling did the writing for him - and people thought it was just a kind of act staged for Shantanu’s benefit and it wasn’t really him who was passing those examinations. However in the fifth board exams, he had to take the help of a writer, anyone who was in fourth standard or lower - that is, in a class below him. He obtained 82% in the exams - and people were amused - can this boy who cannot even sit in a chair on his own really do this or it has just happened by chance?

And the years went by. As Shantanu grew up, it became more and more difficult to handle him because of his growing spasticity and so a tutor was appointed to teach him at home only, while his name still being enrolled in the school. He passed the 8th board in first division and the neighborhood started talking about him. He cleared 10th standard and was featured in the local newspaper. When he got through his 12th, there was a ceremony arranged by the Maharashtrian society to felicitate him, several newspapers and magazines all over the country and a local channel covered the news. The news even found its way on the Internet. And this year, when he went to write his b.com second year’s exam, there was a newspaper reporter waiting for him there ready to take his interview. Shantanu has vouched that he would stop only when the President of India awards him a medal and who knows, he might set some greater target then?

And this Shantanu, my dear friends, happens to be my own darling kid brother - the only person on planet earth I love more than I love myself. So, on behalf of my entire family, I request you all from the bottom of my heart to include Shantanu in your prayers today so that God, if he is really there, gives him the strength to reach his goal. Thank you.

This speech took 6 min 45 sec to deliver, my rate was speech was too high and lacked proper intonation and expression. Structure of the speech was appreciated.