Some shared moments, Some cherished memories, A few hearty laughs, And a few idiosyncrasies, Is all that you can glean from the time you spent away. And then the curtains fall, The candle snubbed and darkness prevails. Smoky eyes and a misty face Is all that remains. Some shared moments, Some cherished memories, And then the curtains fall. You realize it is already too late... P.S. - Dedicated to my late friend Vivek whose untimely demise has left us all baffled. Time may have drifted us apart "Bhoyaa" but you will always be remembered and missed. It is true that the only true gift you can ever give a person is your time and I am privileged and honored to have been gifted with your time.
I managed to deliver my Project 2 speech for ToastMasters today. I have to thank my blog for writing this speech as three posts that I had published way back on this very blog were the foundations of this speech. I am still not sure how I managed to garner good reviews for this as I had not been keeping well for the past two days before delivering this speech. I guess it helps if you read your speech for over 20 times and create a mental picture of all your gestures and expressions in your mind. Anyways this time I got my fellow ToastMasters to record my speech and here is the video.
As always any reviews and comments are welcome. Here is the speech in written -
WHAT’S STOPPING YOU?
He
was suffocating. The room was filled with pitch black darkness. He was
desperate for fresh air. He moved to the only small hole in the door and put
his mouth to it to suck in air, but it wasn't enough. It was as if the walls
all around him were closing in on him. He clasped the door knob and tried to
force the door open but to no avail. It was as if the entire vitality in the
world was against him, forcing him back in the room and he was losing the fight
and the will. He was suffocating, the key, he had to find the key. He panicked,
he had searched for it before, he couldn't find it and now he was afraid, afraid
of going away from the hole, afraid that he'd lose his only breath. No he would
not leave it, he'll cling to it. Damn that elusive key.
Good
Afternoon! Ladies and gentlemen.
Dreams, we hear so much about them. How many
of us sitting in this room are living their dreams or are at least working
towards achieving them? How many of us haven’t felt the fear of that
claustrophobic man but still refuse to find the key? Let me ask you a very
simple question “What’s Stopping You?” Take a moment to reflect on the question.
Meanwhile, I will help you identify the three main doors behind which the
answer hides. Again I cannot deem to answer this question for you, I can merely
make a suggestion and leave you to ponder and discover the answer for yourself.
“What
If?” isn’t this, the biggest dilemma we all face? This is the first door. What
if you fail? What if you reach out your hand and all that comes in your grasp
is thin air? A wise man, in this session itself once told me, that the ideal
attitude for succeeding in life is 30% optimism and 70% pessimism. Yes, think
before you act but don’t let the uncertainty of the result weigh down your determination.
You can’t control how the chips fall into place so stop fretting and take the
plunge. Sometimes it helps to not worry over the repercussions. This in no way
means that if your dream is to bungee jump or sky dive, you don’t take the
necessary precautions. Remember you are no Tom Cruise and this isn’t Mission
Impossible.
It
is often said that we live our lives not as we want them to be but as others
perceive them to be. Yes friends, it is the mighty public opinion – the second
door. There is a cartoon floating around on facebook these days. It depicts two
rotund, overweight people, a male and a female, sitting atop a feeble donkey
and enjoying what seems like a safari, when they come across a group of people
who remark – “Oh! Two people on a donkey’s back!! What sadists.” The female
gets down the donkey and they continue. Seeing them thus, another group remarks
– “How cruel!! He is letting his wife walk!!”. Now the man gets down the donkey
and offers the seat courteously to the woman. They had only gone a few meters
when another group jests – “Look, he is letting his wife ride. Who is the
boss!!”. Fed up both the man and the woman decide to walk beside the donkey,
their safari now being entirely ruined when they hear – “Fools!! They have a
donkey and they are walking”. Hearing this, the man starts pulling his hair out
and the woman starts crying.
Well
this satire on our society is absolutely true. No matter what you do, you
cannot please everyone. So why even bother? There are always going to be people
who criticize you for the sheer audacity you displayed by doing what you want,
just because you had the guts and they didn’t. They still analyze and criticize
Mahatma Gandhi for something he did when he was alive. He has been dead for
over 60 years and they still won’t give up.
And
now we come to the third door. We are
all pretty familiar with the following excuses – “I have responsibilities,
kids, wife, parents” or “I am too old now” or “Is it worth the risks” and still
better “I am comfortable here and good at it, so why change”. Well, I’ll only
add – You are never too old to start living, unless you take the risk you will
never know and nothing great is ever achieved without sacrifices.
This
brings us back to point zero. Answer
this – What or rather Who is Stopping You? Who is it that has caged himself
behind walls of inadequacy and worthless excuses?
If
you have realized the answer, If you have found the key, then let yourself free
of those shackles. Break your cage and set stride on your empyreal flight for
sky is the limit.
fly afar o! little one, rest not under the scorching sun.. till there is air in your wings, scale the
sky.. fly..fly..fly...
I gave my Project 1 speech for ToastMasters today. For people who do not know what ToastMaster is all about, they should definitely visit the link - http://www.toastmasters.org/ at least once. I am happy that I got to be a part of Toast Masters as every session is a unique learning experience for me. Not only do I get the privilege of talking to like minded people but also get to learn a lot from each and every one of them. Talking about my P1 experience, it was really great. Even though I am not new to public speaking, having participated in a lot of debates/elocution contests in school, yet I still could feel my stomach churning right till the moment my name was called. As I walked to the podium, I could feel my legs shaking and had to take the support of the table placed infront of me just to maintain my calm. But as I started and went on I became more comfortable and began enjoying my speech. I knew, I got this. For interested people here is my ToastMasters P1 speech. I know there is a lot of scope for improvement and although I have completed P1, I'd still welcome any and all reviews.
Project 1 (Introduction Speech)
“No Regrets, One life to live” is my motto for life. I
believe in living in the moment and doing whatever I want to do at that moment.
I am always on the lookout for learning something new. Good Afternoon Toast
masters and friends.
I am Ankit Rastogi, from Meerut, U.P. I am an only engineer
born into a family of doctors. I completed my B.E Computer Science from BITS
Pilani. I am an amalgamation of values and experiences accumulated from living
in a lot of cities all over India. Till now I have never stayed in a city for
more than 4 years. Maybe that is why I have an inherent wanderlust, a thirst
for adventure and a curiosity to know different cultures and people. It’s
either that, or my dislike for cricket which makes me run from place to place.
God has a wicked sense of humor. So he decides to make me an Indian, born into
a family of cricket maniacs, in a place like Meerut where cricket is the way of
life, blesses me with terrible – terrible hand eye coordination and just for the
heck of it, decides that yours truly shall abhor cricket. Seriously!! Are you
kidding me? You cannot imagine what I have to go through everyday. Well I have
managed to live 24 years with it, I suppose I can manage another 24 hopefully.
One thing, however I am grateful to be blessed with is my
love for reading. I vividly remember reading Pride and Prejudice, an innocent
kid in 5th standard and not understanding a word of it. It was sometime
later and with some experience and lost innocence, I realized the reason for
this. Jane Austen was a girl. Anyways, it created in me a passion for words and
gave fuel to my imagination. I must admit that this child like passion still
exists in me every time I pick up a new book. I suffer from self proclaimed
Obsessive Compulsive Reading Disorder. Not only do I read feverishly but for
the duration of the book, I live in that world. I can recall this one incidence
when I was still reading the Harry Potter series where instead of applying my
bicycle brakes before colliding head first with a car, I kept on repeating
“Impedimenta”, “Impedimenta”. For Harry Potter illiterates, this is a spell to
slow down a moving object. But this being damned reality, the bicycle didn’t
slow down obviously and I still met with the accident.
I cannot complete my introduction without discussing about
my passion for teaching. I started teaching underprivileged kids as a part of
NGO called Nirmaan during my time at BITS Pilani, and it is this experience
above all else that makes me who I am. I learnt more from those kids and from
teaching them what little I could, than I have learnt from anything else till
now. “Joi de Vivre” – I learnt the true meaning of this phrase from those kids.
Even if they didn’t know where there next meal was coming from, they never gave
up on smiling. My best accomplishment till now is teaching one of them how to
write his name. I am currently working for Samarthanam an organization for
disabled children.
To sum up, I am a reader, a poet, a thinker, a renegade, a
philanthropist and in the future I want to add a social entrepreneur and an
established writer to this list. I am enjoying being all that I am.
The past is past, the
future is ..but the present.. And living in the moment is all I have.. So let me fill this moment, With all the vibrant shades.. For the dots are mine, as are the colours And as are the choices I make.
On this note, I’ll take my leave. Hopefully you know me a
bit better.
P.S. - Although this in essence is the speech I delivered, I made quite a few Impromptu changes and additions in the speech, just to engage my audience even more.
One fine day I logged into my Goodreads account, out of the
blue, and was surprised at the number of books I have read till now – over 120
(which is quite a lot ‘cause I keep reading the same book multiple times – I’ve
read Pride and Prejudice over 14 times * now). That’s pretty huge coming from
me even though I suffer from a self proclaimed Obsessive Compulsive Reading
Disorder (hence referred to as OCRD).
Anyway, it was on this day that I
decided to embark upon the tiresome task of compiling a list of 5 best books
I’ve read so far. The list is done now, finally, but it was the process that
really intrigued me. As I kept on going over the list adding/deleting names,
arguing fervently with myself over the merits of each, one name however
remained constant. This is a name which I have often had to justify to a lot of
my friends who I made privy to my list.
Well the name is Harry Potter.
Yes the entire series and not one in particular. Yes, you are allowed to laugh/
mock/ ridicule me all you want, but for me it really is one of the best books
I’ve read.
I remember reading the first 6 Harry
Potter books over a span of a week (hence the claim for OCRD) and being so lost
in Harry’s magical world for a long time after that, that I kept on blurting the
spells from those books subconsciously. I vividly remember this one instance
where I was on my bike, speeding down a slope and was actually about to crash
into a car parked there and instead of applying breaks I kept on repeating
“Impedimenta” (the crash still happened though, one more realization of damned reality).
Not only this, I kept trying to scare away lizards with – “sssaayahaa sssiheth”. Never mind that lizards weren’t snakes but
their being reptiles, was reason enough for me to practice my “Parseltongue” (for Harry Potter
illiterates – that’s snake language) on them.
I know, a lot of Harry Potter
fans will vouch for similar experiences, but the fact is, these developments
were very important for me. I considered myself a mature reader then (a
laughable and debatable thought now), having read Ayn Rand’s - “The
Fountainhead” and “Atlas Shrugged” multiple times – and an ardent believer in
her theory of “objectivism”. I had first brushed off the Harry Potter books as “kiddish”.
These developments were, let’s just put it mildly - enlightening.
So what was it about these books
that made me change my outlook? Was it the spells? the characters? The myriad
fantasy creatures? Of course yes!! But I had read and admired Lord of the Rings
long before I read Harry Potter books so it is safe to say that this world
wasn’t new (and Mr. Harry Potter had mighty big shoes to fit in and so did J.K.
Rowling). When I think about it, it wasn’t so much the magic, that enchanted me
but the subtle links to reality and the way the author chose to establish them that
really pulled me in.
Magic, kudos to J.K. Rowling for
plucking at that chord in all our hearts, for deep within don’t we all want to
believe that it really does exist? Haven’t we at some point or other in our
lives wished for a miracle or a magical solution for all our problems? Harry
lives in that world. And you know what the best part is – neither he nor any of
the other great stalwart wizards have a magical solution to his “Voldemort”
issues. This is why I love J.K. Rowling’s books. On one side there is the
promise of magic, the unknown and unforeseen and at the same time, the
realities of life still pretty much remain the same. Pretty much because we
still find descriptions of love potion, immortality etc. (Oh come on! it is a
world of wizardry and it has to make some impossible things possible by magic!).
“It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than
our abilities.”These words from
Dumbledore truly form the gist of Harry Potter. The books may on the surface be
about the more generic idea of good vs. evil and an orphan boy’s taking up the
mantle against evil. However it is the importance of these words that Rowling
chooses to emphasize through the actions of her protagonists and host of other
characters that make the books what they are. Harry for instance never had
enough to eat, was made to wear his cousin’s old clothes and in general was
maltreated by the Dursleys. However, at the first opportunity he had, he chose
to share whatever he could afford with Ron, a stranger he had just met (Book 1).
It would have been perfectly understandable if he chose not to but he didn’t.
There are multiple such incidents spread across all the books like when Harry
had the choice to get Peter Petigrew killed for betraying his parents resulting
in their death, but he chose not to(Book 3). Or when he chose to share
information about the dragon test in the Triwizard tournament with another
rival because he only thought it fair (Book 4) and last but not the least he
named his son Albus Severus Potter choosing to acknowledge the contribution and
sacrifices of Severus Snape (one of the most hated characters, well until the
end of Book 7) in his victory. These are many of the various such incidents
that left an indelible mark upon me. No discussion about Harry potter would be
complete without Ron and Hermoine. These two characters epitomize the meaning
of true friendship. They made several choices throughout the story choosing to
stick with their friend through thick and thin even if it meant risking their
lives. I mean erasing all your memories from your parents’ minds is a pretty
big sacrifice and shows the strength of the character. However again, it was
Hermoine’s choice to do this and it would have been understandable if she didn’t.
So in essence, Rowling talks
about all the things that would tug at your heart and would definitely
establish an emotional connect between you and the characters, love, kindness,
friendship, loyalty, but it is the choices she has her protagonists make to
demonstrate these traits that really pull you in. I mean even her protagonist
is not an extraordinarily gifted wizard. He manages to come out the winner from
all the situations because he is helped and supported by the people who love
him. Tell me how many of us have not depended upon the strength of someone we
love in times of distress? And Rowling chooses to emphasize this fact that
however difficult the times may be, you can handle them with your loved ones on
your side.
So yes, I love Harry Potter
books, the characters, the magic, the world, but most of all I love that even though
they are all wizards, they are still humans.
* I say over because I have read the end innumerable times.
P.S. - I am back :)
P.P.S - This post has been long in the making. But I couldn't help it.Every time I started working on it, I ended up reading the books or watching the movies again. So in the end today I just decided to get it out of the pipeline. So the post might feel a little rushed towards the end.
LO! my friend ..I am on.. set my boots firmly on, let's see whereto this road gets.. what new days, the journey begets...
On this note began my affair with this "not all is lost". We've had an on and off relationship of sorts. Well frankly, me and my infidelity is to be blamed for this. This blog has been my faithful companion in times of melancholy & distress, whereas has remained woefully forgotten in happier times. I think that is unfair and hence I have reached the decision to discontinue this blog. I'll miss it.
Maybe in the future I'll continue this blog or start a new one or maybe just return to the comforts of my good old diary. But for now it is time to bid farewells.. Sayonara... Love you and Miss you...
P.S. - To all my reader (if any) love you and miss you too.
