Ruwi Toastmasters Club: 60th session

Often, in life, we give up before trying hard enough. When we found that the attendance in the 60th session was about to drop below 10, we thought of postponing it altogether. But thanks to power-packs like IPAD Kumar and guest TMOD Babu Srinivasan, the idea of a family session was born. Just look at the photo above once again. What does the attendance look like? High five all! Dropping a session on 31st Dec would indeed have been unpardonable.

SAA Dilip opened the session with 10 words that drive our lives. A powerful opening indeed and he handed over the stage to another powerful speaker, the acting President.

Acting President Panna opened the 60th session with a short history of the club's young journey, lauding the pivotal role played by the senior founder members in its formative year. She followed up (by now an expected occurrence) with a story about 5 monkeys who, stuck in a cage with a banana tied high up, perfected the practice of pulling down anyone trying to climb up for it. In life, we should not pull down people who are trying something new but should ourselves enrich our own lives and the roles we play in it. Let us bring some novelty and innovation in our role plays in TM sessions as well.

Today we were blessed with not one TMOD but two! TM Babu Srinivasan of SBG club and our TM Kaviya took over a darkened auditorium and declared us to be on a journey on a spaceship, captained by Bindass Bond. The back-and-forth banter was spontaneous and entertaining and the introductions of the role players were connected to the characters of the heavenly bodies whizzing by. Novel, refreshing and a true Toastmasterpiece!

Timekeeper TM Dilip (in a double role) introduced us to the timing rules. TMOD Kaviya declared that in space travel, time becomes warped and it would be interesting to see how the Timekeeper dealt with it.

Wordmaster TM Kamil introduced the word of the day REJOICE, quite appropriate for the season. Indeed, rejoicing was anyway in the air, and people has no trouble with the round-robin. TMODs wondered whether the phenomenon of weightlessness would help TM Kamil with his resolution of reduction.

Jokemaster TM Swati was espied as a bright yellow heavenly body, viz Venus, whose rotation is slower than her revolution, just as TM Swati's project speeches were less frequent than expected. She read out a number of jokes, with evident enjoyment, and lightened our mood.

TM Ananth, identified as a friendly asteroid who always lands with a bang, described the P-3 evaluation criteria on the dot, which wants the speaker to Get to the Point, in his usual structured and succinct style. We were all pepped up to hear the upcoming speech.

P-3 project speech was delivered by TM Raja, titled "He and She". Invading straight into our marital lives, TM Raja expounded how white lies on the one hand and possessiveness on the other plays havoc with marital peace. Like footprints on the moon do not get erased, his speech left indelible marks on our minds.

TM Kumar, captain Bindaas Bond himself, explained the evaluation criteria of a P-7 speech, which tells the speaker to Research your topic. The speaker was expected to provide support to his opinions with facts, research data and illustrations.

P-7 project speech was delivered by TM Rajat, titled "Black" and dealt with blindness. Given that spines are found to elongate during space travel, it was expected that TM Rajat to add a few inches to his six-foot frame by the time he finished his seven minutes.

Table topics were conducted by TM Viswanath. Our TMODs were on a spacewalk and they expected TM Viswa also to reel in his prey in zero-gravity. He had built up the topics on the theme of New Year and the speakers found the topics close to their heart.

Two evaluations followed, each of them were preceded by lucky draws, inspired by the lucky gems sparkling around the spaceship at this point of time. Both the evaluations by TM Ananth and TM Kumar were structured, explicit and encouraging. Thanks you TMs, for the feedback.

There were repairs going on for some time to the spacecraft and TM Venkat was called upon to give a report on faults located and allowable expenses, ergo the Grammarian role. TM Venkat almost bloomed into the GE role but stopped himself in time, restricting himself to a feedback on usage of English. A good report, TM.

TMODs declared the session to have been entertaining no doubt, but also educative, especially for them. While TM Kaviya said she appreciated silence now having tasted space, TM Babu said space gives perspective to problems, just as the earth looks colourful and pretty from a distance, whatever may be the reality on the ground. A wonderful session, TMODs.

Acting President Panna delivered her concluding remarks and announced the awards. Today was the birthday of Deeksha while tomorrow would be TM Kumar's birthday, who produced a chocolate cake which we all drooled over. We were also blessed with the dates and holy water that TM Kamil provided. Apart from this, we had snacks and tea, of course.

The day's awards were: