Ruwi Toastmasters Club: 78th session

Summer vacations as well as Ramadaan is approaching and attendance is usually affected. But, though less than usual, the rows were pretty well occupied. An extremely encouraging sign people, and do keep it up through the slog overs in the next two months.

SAA TM Ramalingam kicked off the session 2 minutes before time. In fact the class was already seated at 3.12 pm and was getting restless at the lack of activity.

Acting Prez MTM Panna led off with a small inspirational story about a blind lady who energised others in her daily commute by her upbeat attitude and independent spirit. Let's keep our tail up, she said. If blindness can be overcome, anything can be.

TMOD Raja had chosen as his theme "Being blind". Starting with 15 mins of "eyes closed" sitting, his session took us into the world of the blind - the blind from birth, during life and the visually impaired. It was informative and thought-provoking. He introduced every role-player with a question on some aspect of blindness that he had asked them. A well-played role, TM Raja.

Timekeeper MTM Roman was new to the club but had immediately taken up a role - kudos. She explained the timing rules perfectly and promised she would keep her eyes wide open.

Wordmaster MTM Rita introduced the word MYOPIC to the group, in keeping with the theme. The audience had an enthusiastic go at the round robin, making sentences with the clinical meaning of myopic as well as the metaphorical one. A good word, MTM, and an eye-opener for us.

Jokemaster TM Nagesh was in his element as usual and entertained us with some impromptu jokes as well as his prepared ones (colour blindness while buying sarees was a good one). At the end of his session, he had had the audience rolling in the aisles with watering eyes.

There were 3 speeches scheduled today - a rich haul. P-3 speech criteria were explained by TM Rajat, P-4 criteria by TM Chaitanya and P-8 criteria by TM Paresh.

MTM Swati delivered her P-3 speech "Essence of Life". Meant to showcase communication of general and specific purpose in the speech, she achieved her objectives, the speech subject being water, our blindness to water wastage and the need for conservation.As usual, she was very free on stage and exuded confidence.

MTM Kaviya delivered her P-4 speech "Direct the Sail", which was about her travel travails in Mumbai monsoons when she went there to represent her college. P-4 speech is all about good use of language and language has always been a strong point with MTM Kaviya. A very well-written script.

TM Ramalingam delivered (second time, as he had not been satisfied with his first delivery) his P-8 speech "My Life's Learnings". P-8 speech is about use of visual aids and TM Ramalingam's piece-de-resistance was his powerpoint presentation that shared the learnings with aphorisms, anecdotes and humour. His various gems of wisdom were eye-openers for us.

Table topics were conducted by MTM Usha using the same theme of blindness. However, the subjects were more on mental blindness, which made them more interesting to the speakers and audience. Good choice of topics, MTM.

Evaluators gave feedback to the respective speakers, with regard to achievement of project goals, things done well, and aspects to keep an eye upon.

Grammarian TM Vishwanath was both happy and unhappy. Happy because he could hardly find any grammatical errors even with eyes and ears wide open, and unhappy because of the same reason.

General Evaluator TM Venkat went through the session meticulously as usual and gave encouraging comments to all.

Acting Prez MTM Panna distributed the awards and announced the session closed.