My 2 Cents & I am ....

Public Speaking

"Inga va paa, lead the assembly today" said my PT Sir. I started shivering in my spine and there was liquid wetting my shorts. I was in Eighth Standard, new school and everything. The school had an unique way of deciding who was going to lead the assembly- quite a dictatorial way as well. The PT(Periya Thollai- Big Trouble in English) Sir basically decided to make a scapegoat of one harmless innocent soul every morning. You cannot say "no" because of the image problem in front of the "figures" in class :-)

So, I walked up first time and the last thing I wanted to do was to piss in fear. So, I adjusted my pants like Sachin Tendulkar does everytime he faces a ball and exchanged a few smiles with the shorties of each class( they stand at the head of the line). The Principal arrived and said "start". I shouted out "School, Attention" , "School Stand At Ease", "Attention and "Stand At Ease". Ouch!!! there was a slight murmur. No I dint piss!! It was because at the four command the school should have been in attention and not stand -at-ease. Instead of calling one more attention and then saying "school prayer", I chose to reinvent the wheel. I went again and called "School Stand -At Ease" "School-Attention", "SAE" "Attention" and then the prayer started. It was the first time I realized how nice it was to pray and thank God for all his favors. At most of the other times during prayer at school,you look at the goodlooking senior girls in 12th standard or kick the guy before you or look whether the teacher handling Chemistry was absent for the day as you haven't finished her homework.

My ordeals for the day did not end. Even before the headmistress could make an annoucement that he had to make, I said "School Disperse". After that incident, I thought I would never be invited but then after a while, I was invited every day to do the honors. I guess the girls would have complained that my eyes were wandering too much and they would rather see my leading the school than behind their back.

Public speaking is really an art. Its like your girl next door- looks easy but it is very difficult to get :-) . Over the years, I have attended talks on this topic and they have always emphasized that to enthrall audience, you have to present an enjoyable cocktail of humor and message. The one man who got the proportion wrong and the cocktail became too heady was Mr. Jeppiar.

Jeppiar has over the years gone from worse to worstest. Age doesn't really catch up with him. He is like wine- the older it gets, more valuable it becomes. The first time I heard Jeppiar, I was in splits. I never knew that Her Majesty's Language could be murdered so effortlessly in front of 1000 people. You would tend to beleive that Mr.Jeppiar might be the sole reason behind India's independence. An absolutely audacious delivery with no care or concern for grammar , a miserable and conspicuous lack of diction in jugalbandhi with an abject slaughter of logic and reason. How else would you term a man who says "No ragging. If ragging, we arrest police" :-)

An equally embarassing incident happend in my life while I was presenting at a fundraiser a few months back. I was talking about an initative called
"Guria" . The lights were on me - bright and shining. It was so luminous that it clouded my eyes and brain. At that point, I said "This project aims to promote second generation population" . There was a huge uproar in the room. In one moment, I almost changed the focus of the organization, I bit my tongue, blamed the lights, corrected myself and proclaimed in Caesaresque fashion "WE aim to end second generation prostitution". I might have corrected myself and done justice but my friends remind me from time to time about that day under the lights.

I agree with Seinfeld when he says" The greatest fear of people is 1. Public Speaking and 2. Death. So it means, people would be happy to be in the coffin than reading an eulogy" :-)