Toastmaster's Advanced Speech 6 - "Innocence aka Thapa"

This is speech #2 from  "Storytelling" manual, called "Let's Get Personal". The objective is to learn the elements of a good story and to create and tell an original story based on a personal experience. Time allotted is 6 to 8 minutes.

Have you met innocence before? I have. He is 24 years old and divides his time driving people around in Leh and hibernating in Zanskar. His name is Thapa.

Good Afternoon fellow toastmasters.

Even if it has been almost a year now that I have been to Ladakh, the name still brings up a flood of memories. It was in May last year that I went to this eastern valley in the State of Jammu and Kashmir with a group of friends. We spent about a week there, struggling to breathe in sub zero temperatures, where the lowest altitude was 11,000 feet above sea level - the height from which a normal sky dive occurs. The very first day we reached there, our tour organizer allocated different cars and drivers to various groups. It was then that we first saw this 5-feet tall, young Sherpa kind of guy with his rugged jeans, careless sweatshirt and tousled hair, squatting atop the bumper of his car, picking teeth with his nails. Our first thought was, “Seriously? This guy? Cant we get someone else?”

But that was not to be. The five of us were stuck with him for the next five days, and he with us, and thus started the process of discovering this gem. Along with being a driver, Thapa could also function as a tour guide, albeit a poor one, but guide nonetheless. A worshipper of Dalai Lama, he would always turn the car encircling a shrine on the shoulder of the road. Incredulously, we would ask, “Why Thapa, there is this 6 feet wide road in front of you and you are playing such stunts?” and his ready reply would be, “For good luck madam. This is mountain road, but no accident will happen, you will see.”

But of course, an accident does happen. Apparently, encircling a shrine does not guarantee any benefit against refraining from honking on blind turns. I think Thapa did not know that there existed a horn in his car, he never used it! After prodding a bit, he sheepishly accepted that he did not honk because the poor driver coming in from the other side of the turn will get scared with such a loud noise. All we could do at this point is to request him with folded hands to also worry about poor us.

What we did not know then is that Thapa need not be told to worry about us or his fellow drivers or anyone else; he did that on his own. If anyone felt sick due to long drives on the zigzag curvy roads, he would be the first to get down helping, consoling, offering water without saying a word. If you merely mentioned you were bored with the same songs playing again and again, he would get a new USB with the latest songs, God knows from where. If you were singing along and he had to stop the car and get down in between, he would still keep the engine running so that the music doesn’t stop. If you pleaded with him to let you drive for a bit, he would get teary eyed and say, “Please..I will lose my job”, but a while later move away from the group and let you drive when his boss was out of sight.

The younger of two brothers, Thapa lived with his family in a village near Zanskar during winters and came to Leh to work as a driver in summers. As per the military tradition in his village, his older brother was the star of the family with a job in the Army, the most respectable job a man can get, and our protagonist was the ugly duckling who failed to get entry due to his physique. Nonetheless, in his girlfriend’s and his own view, Thapa turned out pretty well earning “six thousand rupees per month” as a driver. His dream was to buy the car he was currently driving and continue the same profession. Ladies and gentlemen, he wanted to be the proud owner of a vehicle, not to employ someone else and reap the benefit.…but just own the car and keep driving tourists around!

After spending five days in the company of this Kurkure-loving, god-fearing, bashful, sensitive person with a twinkle in his eye, we could not help but become his fans. On the last day, on our very last drive, we tell him about the importance of savings, opening a bank account, and how he can take a loan and fulfill his dream of buying a car and marrying his girlfriend.

At the airport, we say our goodbyes and take a last look at this guy with his rugged jeans, careless sweatshirt and tousled hair, squatting atop the bumper of his car, with tears in his eyes, and think Thapa, you are innocence personified.

This speech took 7:20 minutes to deliver and was appreciated for characterization and dialogue  The presentation could have been more dramatic.

Toastmaster's Advanced Speech 5 - "Cinderella's Story"

This is speech #4 from  "The Entertaining Speaker" manual, called "A Dramatic Talk". The objective is to develop an entertaining dramatic talk about an experience or incident including vivid imagery, characters and dialogue. Time allotted is 5 to 7 minutes.

Once again, this blog came to my rescue and i narrated this story written three years ago - 

Cinderella's Story

This speech took 6:40 minutes to deliver and was appreciated for characterization and climax. A couple of sentence formations could have been done in a better way.

Toastmaster's Advanced Speech 4 - "A Software Engineer's Worst Nightmare"

This is speech #3 from  "The Entertaining Speaker" manual, called "Make Them Laugh". The objective is to prepare a humorous speech drawn from your own experience and deliver it in a way that makes the humor effective. Time allotted is 5 to 7 minutes.

I had attempted to write a humorous article a while back and used the same for this speech - 

A Software Engineer's Worst Nightmare

This speech took 6:30 minutes to deliver and was appreciated for the humor's relevance to the target audience. Voice modulation could have been better.

Toastmaster's Advanced Speech 3 - "Saat Purya Bhaji"

This is speech #1 from  "Storytelling" manual, called "The Folk Tale". The objective is to tell a folk tale that is entertaining and enjoyable for a specific age group; and to use vivid imagery and voice to enhance the tale. Time allotted is 7 to 9 minutes.

Once upon a time, long long ago, in a faraway land, there lived a king with his young daughter and two little sons. The princess was a rare beauty and the apple of the king’s eye. He wanted to marry her off to a really special person and hence put up the most difficult challenge that he could conceive of for her Swayamwar. There was a huge pond in his kingdom, in the middle of which the king got a long smooth oily pillar erected. Whoever could reach the top without using any tool would be the winner of the contest and consequently, his daughter’s hand.

The word spread far and wide and princes from all over the country started pouring in to try their luck at the pillar but no one could climb it - even halfway. Days turned to weeks, weeks to months, months to years but the challenge remained unfulfilled. So much so that the king and the princess became the laughing stock of the country, as far as remote villages and dense forests.

In one such forest, there lived a fiercely huge monster – green colored with bloodshot eyes, stinky teeth, dread-locked hair and sharp pointed nails. When he heard of the challenge, and its reward, he came rushing to the kingdom - and lo and behold – climbed the pillar in no time at all! The honorable king, with a very heavy heart, organized the wedding and sent his precious daughter off in the jungle.

Years passed and there was no news of the princess, now the monster-wife, from the forest. The king’s sons, who were then too little to understand what had happened to their sister, were now young men, restless and eager to meet their sibling. They asked their father where she went and he told them the story. The two brothers, specially the younger one, were aghast by this tale and decided to embark on a journey to bring their sister back.

They packed two lunch boxes with seven poories and cooked vegetables each and started off in the direction on the forest in a bullock cart. They crossed a few miles and the elder one became hungry. The younger said, go ahead and eat your lunch. He ate. Then a few miles later, he became hungry once again. The younger said, go ahead and eat my seven poories too. The elder ate and was finally satiated.

They resumed their journey on the bullock cart and a few miles later, the younger spotted a pot of curd lying in the way. He said to his brother, “Lets take this and keep it in our cart!”. The brother was afraid to do so and said, “We don’t know who this belongs to. That person might come after us and threaten us!”. The younger then said, “Give me my seven poories back or let me take this pot”. The elder had no choice but to relent.

After some time, they came across a rope. Again the younger wanted to keep it, the elder didn’t. So he said, “Give me my seven poories back or let me take this rope.” This way, the bullock cart was stocked with a rope as well. Sometime later, they found a broom lying on the road, the elder said, "It might belong to a sweeper, he will come to us and demand it back.” The younger relied with his standard retort, “Give me my seven poories back or let me take this broom." Then at the edge of the forest, they found a donkey, and with a “Give me my seven poories back or let me take this donkey”, the younger one loaded the cart with a donkey as well.

In this fashion, the two brothers, with their bullock cart and supplies went to see their sister. When they arrived at her home, the monster had gone hunting. The princess was pleased beyond words to see someone from her own clan after so many years..and that too her brothers..now so grown up and gallant! The younger brother immediately said, “We have come to take you away!”.  The poor princess, afraid for her life and now her brothers’ too…asked them to unload their cart on the cellar and put the oxen far away, out of sight of the monster, since he would be back soon. The brothers agreed, took the pot of curd, rope, broom and donkey and the lunch their sister gave them on the cellar.

Soon, the monster came home and said to his wife, “I can smell humans!” She said, “That must be me! There is no one else here!” The monster still surveyed the house but could not find anything and sat down for his own lunch. Exactly at the spot at which the monster was sitting, there was a hole in the cellar at the top, where the brothers were sitting. Suddenly, the younger brother had the urge to relieve himself. The elder said, “Go and take a leak in that hole!”. The younger one obliged for once and urinated directly in the monster’s lunch!

The monster immediately cried out, “Who’s above?”. The young prince, recognizing an opportunity in this encounter replied with all his strength, “Who’s below?”. Monster shouted, “I am a monster”; the brother boomed, “I am a mega monster”. The monster did not believe him and screamed, “Really? Show me your tail!”. The prince took the long rope and started pushing it down the hole, this alarmed the monster a bit and he said, “Show me your puke!”. The younger brother took the pot of curd and poured it down the hole. The monster was seriously scared now, but still managed to ask one more question, “Show me your loudest shout!”, as an answer, the young prince took the broom and started hitting the donkey with it with all his might. The donkey brayed like there was no tomorrow and the terrified monster ran for his life. The brothers then took their sister back with them to the kingdom, her rightful place, and the king welcomed them with open arms. And they lived happily ever after!

The moral of the story is, no matter how ferocious the adversary is, if you decide, you can beat it. Where there is a will, there is a way!

This speech took 10:36 minutes to deliver and was appreciated for vocal variety.

Toastmaster's Advanced Speech 2 - "Love And Its Syndromes"

This is speech #2 from  "The Entertaining Speaker" manual, called "Resources for Entertainment". The objective is to draw entertaining material from sources other than your own personal experience and adapt your material to suit your topic, your personality, and the audience. Time allotted is 5 to 7 minutes.

“Everything happens to everybody sooner or later if there is time enough”, said the great G. B. Shaw. Another great writer, Mark Twain, said, “The trouble with life is that there is no background music!” 

Good Afternoon fellow Toastmasters. These days I tend to agree with Mr. Shaw quite a lot and disagree with Mr. Twain just a little bit. I am guessing most of you present here would have watched the movie Main Hoo Na? Have you? Then you must know the Main hoo na syndrome; remember the scene – scenes: actually there were two – where Shahrukh Khan sees Sushmita Sen and his arms go up in the air on their own accord and violins start playing in the background? Well, that’s a blatant exaggeration. But then, for the major part of the movie the theme song keeps playing softly as if inside your head in a continuous loop – that, if you are a music lover is still believable. 

You see so many movies, read so many books, watch television, listen to countless songs, watch your friends fall in love and do things they otherwise wouldn’t; and you being your practical pragmatic self laugh at the senseless absurdity. Let me illustrate with a real life story. A couple of my friends, who are now married to each other but at a time were coping with the strain of a long distance relationship – and I swear this really happened – both used to look at the moon at the same instant! Like they show in gooey romantic movies! Yes, in the 21st century when you already have web cams, skype and video calling. Can anyone beat this Na Tum Jaano Na Hum syndrome? 

Then there is the who-will-put-the-phone-down-first complex, from the movie ‘Mere Yaar ki Shaadi Hai’: a couple is talking on the phone, both say bye, both don’t really cut the line, and the conversation goes like this: “You didn’t put the phone down”, “You too didn’t put the phone down”, “Ok, lets do it together, 1, 2, 3, cut.” And then once again, “You didn’t cut it this time either”. And we, the bewildered audience feel - someone cut the wire please and put the poor phone out of its misery. 

And there are so many others, Subodh from Dil Chahta Hai, giving a balloon everyday complex, Raj from I Hate Love Storys giving a flower everyday syndrome, I will bring the moon for you if you just say it; your feet are so beautiful, don’t put them down on the floor; the list is endless, and it makes you silently shriek..ughhh…stop it!! Stop it! 

But then one day, out of the blue comes a tall, not so dark, handsome guy, not on a white horse, but in his mini-SUV and sweeps you off your feet; all the romantic comedies you so categorically laughed at suddenly start dancing in front of you in mockery; all symptoms I just described begin to terrify you and you fervently pray not to end up as one of the examples. But thankfully, something similar to the Saathiya syndrome happens. The scene is - Suhani and Aditya are travelling in a Mumbai local and are having this conversation: 

Suhani: “So, you really love me, huh?” 

Aditya: “Absolutely. How can I prove it to you?” 

Suhani: “Jump off the train” 

Aditya: “I will. As soon as it stops.” 

Then your heart says, that’s my man. Then you start believing completely in Shaw’s Everything happens to everybody and totally discard Twain’s there’s no background music in life. Because, if you are really listening, there is.

This speech took 5:45 minutes to deliver and was appreciated for content and the ability to captivate audience. Body language could be improved.

The heart and soul of a speech – an (un)scientific derivation

"What is the most important aspect of a speech?" When asked this question, some are often perplexed and don’t have a ready answer, some even more so because they are Toastmasters! Ah….the irony of it….who else knows the innards and anatomy of a speech better than them? Starting from the beginning of a Toastmaster’s journey, the Competent Communicator manual projects guide them through the process of writing and delivering a speech – how to write an organized speech, how to make it apt and to the point, how to add shine and sparkle to it; what is body language, voice modulation, visual aids and how these can add value to a speech; how a speech should always be backed up by extensive research; and how to persuade or inspire an audience combining all the aforementioned attributes together.

With all that background knowledge, to single out the most important facet is indeed difficult. Being an engineer expert at drawing a graph first and noting the readings later, I decided to apply similar logic to this burning question and arrive at an answer. Reverse engineering is the second best solution to the most challenging issues, ask anyone working in the IT industry! (The best one is of course a machine reboot, but that’s sadly not applicable here.)

So for any given speech, if we take out the body language and expressions, would it still be a reasonably good speech? This one is easy; sometimes just listening to a speech and not watching the delivery arouses such emotions that hundreds of people are moved and motivated to take some action. Who can forget Pandit Nehru’s iconic ‘At the stroke of the midnight hour’ speech once they have listened to its audio clip? This conjuncture rules out two major factors and makes the choice that much easier for us, even Cassandra would agree. In other words, this ‘Listening can sometimes be as good as watching’ theory leaves us with the confidence that visual aspects can definitely be forgotten for now.

Does that mean voice modulation takes the cake? Again applying the same theory, let’s try removing that too - we are not watching a speaker, not listening to his/her speech delivery, but we are, wait for it…reading (yes! Genius thought, wasn’t it!)…reading the speech transcript. Now if anyone says that reading a speech has not made them laugh or cry at times, is definitely lying. We know that any speech worth its while would deal with an appealing subject, and would have an introduction that would immediately grab your attention, a body which doesn’t bore you and a conclusion summarizing and reinforcing the thought. Wouldn’t reading such a speech still have some degree of effect on you and serve its core purpose? There you have it – the heart of any great speech has to be its content. A syntactically and semantically correct artistic prose, laced with rich vocabulary, impeccable and relevant facts, aptly placed quotes, text that flows from one paragraph to another flawlessly and makes you think, feel, or understand: even reading such a speech material would have a profound impact. Q.E.D.

The next step in our logical analysis should be a corollary of the theorem we not just constructed, but even proved. For this, let us consider a speech that was delivered with the required conviction, with appropriate hand and body movements, expressions defying a mime artist, voice graph more rhythmic than an  ECG report, but with such grammar that made you flinch. Or some statistic that you know for sure is made up. Or with such a vocabulary that even your kid could manage better. Or a hasty introduction and abrupt conclusion. Could the immaculate delivery save such a speech? Surely not. Q.E.D.

In a nutshell, content is the lifeblood of a speech, its basis, its foundation. You add other aspects to it to make it stronger, more impactful and attention-grabbing; whereas content is what you use to even build up and utilize the other parameters effectively. Without good content, a speech is spineless. It’s like eating the cherry on top, without having tasted the dessert. Like tearing out the glittering gift wrapper to find an utterly disappointing gift within. A river sans water. A body sans soul.

Being a blogger myself, I admit that I am not totally impartial in this derivation, but hey….I did present a valid argument (thanks to reverse engineering!).

Toastmaster's Advanced Speech 1 - "My Very Own Sky Fall"

Having chosen "The Entertaining Speaker" manual, my first project is called "The Entertaining Speech". The objective is to use vividly descriptive language and entertain the audience with a topic they would be interested in. 

Date: 15^th November 2006

Place: A private airport near Dallas Fortworth

Time: 11 AM CDT

A 90 pound version of me alights from the car shivering in the 11 degree temperature with four other, equally anxious men. A big burly man, who must be in his late fifties, greets us at the entrance, looks at me expectantly and says, “You’re gonna jump?”, I nod and he is visibly elated. He says, “Well, you’re gonna jump with me then!”

Good Afternoon fellow Toastmasters. You guessed it right, I am talking about the day I did something purely for myself, for the experience, and for the satisfaction of having dared: the day I sky dived.   

The big burly man’s name was Larry, who had an experience of about 4000 tandem skydives. So we entered the hangar, and I, being the youngest and the only female there, was given the privilege of selecting my turn. I thought, well….before I lose my painstakingly accumulated courage and start freaking out, let’s get this over with. And I volunteered to go first. Larry said, “Great! Sign these papers please.” And there was this questionnaire in front of me..do you have any heart related disease, any lung disease, whether you are under the influence of alcohol or drugs, blah blah. This was all routine..the real shocker was the undertaking – “I hereby declare that I am doing this activity of my own accord, with complete knowledge of the perils involved. If anything unseemly occurs, I take total responsibility.”

And then it dawned on me. There could be accidents, one can even die – how stupid of me to not consider this before? Suddenly I wanted to run away, but something, maybe pride, made me stay and sign.

What happened afterwards is a flurry of events, which are kind of blurred in my memory. I was asked to put on all the gear - jump suit, goggles, helmet, gloves and the works. I haven’t put on more layers of clothing till date. In a daze, I suited up, stepped into that airplane, with four people, the pilot, Larry (the tandem guy, saver of life and opener of the parachute), John (the photographer), and Keith (an experienced diver).  Larry said, “Ok girl. Off we go, now you cannot back out.” Sometime during the ride, my and Larry’s gear was tethered together for the tandem jump with me in front. I swear to God, I have absolutely no recollection of it. When i came to my senses at 11,000 feet, the door of the plane opened and a mad gush of wind came in that chilled me to the spine. Everyone said, Jump! But I could not…my ears heard their voice, even carried it to my brain, but my body was frozen at the spot. I wanted to scream, but my vocal chords did not obey. A tiny part of me also wanted to jump, but my hands wouldn't leave the door and my legs wouldn't move, and I held on to Larry for dear life. And all this while, my rational mind was shouting like crazy....why did you  do this to yourself??

You must have heard how adrenaline rush makes things move in slow motion, well, I experienced it. Finally, someone tore my hands away from the door and someone gave a push and I was airborne, falling under gravity. With the sky below my feet and the chilly wind in my lungs, I was a bird for 50-60 seconds. John and Keith had also jumped after me…while John clicked pictures, Keith, in a span of second tried to explain to me with gestures how this is so beautiful and how this moment will never come again, and how important it is to cherish and live it. So I let go, attempted to smile even when the high speed winds were as if tearing my skin away, and looked all around the amazing landscape. Then the parachute opened and brought us in a vertical position..Floating like a feather, I distinctly remember having said, “Larry! I am a bird!”. I imagine he must have smiled then.

These three minutes of my life are, needless to say, among my most treasured memories. The day I was pushed into realizing one of my crazy dreams. Isn’t that all we need sometimes, just a gentle push?

This speech took 7:34 minutes to deliver and was appreciated for choice of topic and language. However, more preparation could have been done, and expressions can be improved.