Toastmasters Clubs in Indore

Toastmasters International is a non-profit educational organization that teaches public speaking and leadership skills through a worldwide network of meeting locations. The mission of Toastmasters is to provide a mutually supportive and positive learning environment in which every member has the opportunity to develop communication and leadership skills, which in turn foster self-confidence and personal growth.

Keeping these objectives in mind, the first chapter of Toastmasters was opened in Indore at a reputed organization in May 2009 - this was a corporate club open only to the employees of the company. The club members meet every week for 90 minutes for delivering prepared speeches and impromptus. The members also perform various roles like Toastmaster, Table Topics Master, Ah Counter, Timer, Grammarian, Evaluator, etc which helps in developing their communication as well as leadership skills. The club has produced many Competent Communicators (a feat accomplished on completing 10 prepared speech projects) till date and many more are moving closer towards achieving this goal. A lot of members have also completed their Competent Leadership track certification, as well as advanced education awards.

There are two more clubs in the Indore Area of Toastmasters now: BeyondKey Indore Toastmasters (a community club open to all, for details refer to the club's facebook page) and Toastmasters at Planet-I (a corporate club open only for IIM-Indore students).

Three more clubs are in the making, one of which is a community club which needs to add members in order to be able to charter. So if any reader is willing to join Toastmasters, leave a comment on this post and i'll get back to you.

Book Review - The Sense of an Ending

It starts with a group of slightly above average teenagers facing the same odds and ends as any other - that euphoria of having officially said good-bye to childhood and entering the adult phase, the same larger than life philosophical boasts - they talk as if they really understand what they are talking about. Midway, it turns into an existential debate on the morality of life and death, suicide in particular. But the end...its the end that leaves you thinking, or rethinking, about the past: your perceptions of the events that took place in your lifetime with the limited knowledge of the context, is that really what happened? The things you remember now, did they actually happen or are they just manifestations of what you believe happened? Were you so prejudiced about something, or someone, that you could not see what was in front of you all the time? And more such questions. And guilt. And remorse. 

Of course, or in the author's words, it is psychologically self evident that, all this happens to Tony, the protagonist who is also the narrator, but somewhere, we can see some reflections of ourselves in him. The author has beautifully woven a story with characters that seem like everyday people, with Tony candidly describing all that comes to his mind. The plot is gripping, to say the least, and offers a magnificent take on history - both personal and otherwise - and our interpretation of it. The language is rich, yet easy to understand.

But no matter how many questions it raises and attempts to answer, it is after all a  story, a brilliant one at that, which simultaneously mystifies and baffles you. That it makes you think, is an added advantage. Mr. Julian Barnes, you totally deserve that Man Booker you earned for this compelling work of fiction.

My Toastmaster's speech 10 - "A is A"

Its called "Inspire Your Audience" and objective is to inspire the listeners by appealing to noble motives and challenging the audience to achieve a higher level of beliefs or achievement.

I recently overheard a conversation while standing in a queue to check out my grocery. An elderly lady in front of me was talking to her husband – "You know what happened at Mr. Sharma’s yesterday? Poor old fellow, had a huge fight with his son, and now the son has threatened to throw him out of the house! i was so jealous of him before, that his child lives with him, but now I think we are so much better off, even if our kids are abroad!"

It was as if I was shot by a bolt of lightning at that time and I had this epic realization, or epiphany for that matter, that we are all inherently barbarous, and we derive happiness by comparing ourselves to other people’s miseries. Classic example is the very famous story of the beggar who has no shoes. He goes to the temple and asks God, "What kind of a God you are, when so many people have cars and scooters to go from one place to another, all I ask is for a pair of shoes, and you can’t even give me that?" Right at that moment, as if on cue, a legless man arrives there with a pair of crutches, and our beggar immediately apologizes and says, "Thank you God, I got my answer – at least I have feet and I am immensely grateful for that. I swear I will never complain about shoes now." So this beggar was unhappy relative to people owning vehicles, but is happy relative to a cripple. His state of mind depends on what is the recent thing he has seen and compared himself to.

Aren’t we all like that? Comparing to something or someone all the time? His rating is better than mine, her salary is lesser than me, his bike gives more mileage, my neighbor’s roses are so much more beautiful than the ones in my garden, abc’s child is so quiet and well behaved, why can’t mine be like that, xyz’s house is so small, thank god mine is bigger…and so on. I have seen people compare disability even, I have done it too at times, and now to think of it, it sickens me to the core. As some of you might be aware, my younger brother has cerebral palsy of all four limbs, meaning he cannot sit or stand on his own or use his hands or anything, but his IQ is normal. He used to go to a fitness center for physiotherapy where all kinds of kids with all kinds of disabilities used to come, and all parents used to compare to see how much raw was the deal they got. How can you compare a thing like this? Some kid, paralyzed from the waist below, someone was all ok, but was spastic and had epilepsy, some did not recognize their own parents but could do day-to-day activities on their own, someone was blind or deaf or mute….how do you decide who is better off? More important question is why do you have to think in those terms? If you do, there is no end, in either direction – no matter how bad your situation is, there always will be someone in a worse situation, and no matter how good the circumstances are, there will always be someone who is better off, more so, because it is an illogical as well as subjective comparison.

It’s like that ad on TV – some person is walking on the road wearing all white clothes with a smug expression on his face – look at the whiteness and purity of my attire. And then this packet of detergent goes "whoosh!" and you see the patch it created is somehow – whiter. I don’t get it. White is white, how can your white be whiter than my white? It’s a color for crying out loud.

Can we not be happy or satisfied in the absolute? Can we not build this world within ourselves; where we appreciate and evaluate others, be judgmental and have opinions, even put ourselves in others’ shoes, but not want those shoes? Or not feel the importance of our shoes after trying out theirs?

I say we can, we just need to give it an honest try. Just close your eyes for a few seconds and think, like Shakespeare said, all the world’s a stage and I have been given this role to play. Doesn’t matter if it is better or worse than anyone’s, its mine and I will do complete justice to it…no matter what. Because A is A. It is what it is. I am unique, one of my kind, born after so many evolutionary cycles, and i cannot be compared, whether I reach the depths of despair or heights of achievement.

Now open your eyes and see, the world is already a different place, where you are not taller or shorter or fairer or darker or richer or poorer. You are just you, and like the Rolling Stones once sang, "You can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometimes well you might find, you get what you need."

This speech took 9:05 minutes to deliver and was appreciated for speech content, body language and voice modulation. However, more conviction was required during speech delivery. With this speech, i reached the Competent Communicator stage of Toastmasters.