Toastmasters Club: Project 1 , The icebreaker

"Strengthen your strengths and weaken your weaknesses." I know I can speak very well and people shower me with praises for being confident and great at speaking. However I am also aware that I am at times a little too rough at the edges. The possibility of a devastating blowup on stage always remains. Probablity could be my big enemy with each successful meeting that chance of that big embarrassing performance on stage.

So I joined this club called “The Toastmasters International ” at my company. I get to give 10 speeches over a period of time with various themes and aims. My intention is to firm up a strength. If I am a good speaker there is no reason why I can’t be better.

The first speech is an ice-breaker. I am supposed to introduce myself on stage and try to identify with the audience. I gave it on this Wednesday. It was a decent effort though I think people praised me more than I deserved. I did not memeorize the whole speech and it caused some issues. Also a major fact was that my eye contact with the audience was poor.

Anyway here is my speech.Its titled 'hope'.

“Good Evening Toastmaster ,fellow toast masters and honored guests. Today on my first meeting as a toastmaster, I have the pleasure of welcoming among us a writer, poet, debater, blogger as well as a budding singer.

Would any of you like to guess who he is ?Don’t look around. That person is occupying the stage right now.

Let me tell you a little secret about my name,”My middle name is actually my first name.” And I can assure you it causes innumerable problems. In school and college where people only normally knew me by my name middle name, the presence of Syed used to cause a lot of confusion . I would get a lot of comments like “ where did this Syed suddenly come from?” As if people change their names everyday.

In Infosys on the other hand the display name is so widely used that, people generally ask “If you are Ashraf, who the hell is Syed? “

But enough of the banter. Let me tell you something about myself. I come from Allahabad, the land of Sangam and the Kumbh mela. My father is an army officer and my mother is a lecturer in English. I have been brought up in a lot of places. In fact in my first school, we used to have snow days. Rain the joke went , we could handle any day.

Anyway after a certain time my dad decided changing schools too frequently would harm me academically. So he asked for a posting to our hometown where I joined to Boys High School. Our most famous alumnus is someone who has choosen acting as his profession. We know him as the Big B or Amitabh Bacchan.

Later while dad would get posted to literally the other end of India, I would stay put in Allahabad.

I have always read quite indiscriminately since childhood and my favourite book is Midnights Children. I am also a big fan of Urdu poetry. There is a line in Urdu poetry which translates something like “Sufficient heartache will make even a person with a heart of stone pen poetry”. After class tenth, I started writing poetry. What I can tell you is that there were girls and heartache. Neither in limited quantities.

In that period I also was part of my school magazine board and also worked with the Times of India as a freelance writer. I was the youngest freelance writer by a very big margin.

I say that where I am is the result of a series of accidents and conscious decisions. I was quite enthusiastic about being a until I realized in class 12^th that being a doctor required too long a commitment.

So I switched to engineering. Having just missed the cut for IIT, I decided to join NIT Warrangal through AIEEE. However man proposes God disposes. My parents had never heard of Warrangal. The day after I was allotted NIT warrangal, Naxals killed 6 policeman in the district. That was nearly 4.5 years ago when Naxalite violence was rare. My mom thought I was going to Somalia for engineering and would never return. Nit Warrangal was over.

So dejected I joined computer science engineering at Army Institute of Technology , Pune. But I would later be surprised because AIT turned out to be a great experience.

AIT is a fully residential college & hostel life turned out to be a great eye-opener. Only those who have been in a hostel can appreciate the experience. There were people willing to borrow anything and everything. And of course later forget to return the stuff.

With no mom and dad around ,everyone had to stand up for himself /herself(I will be politically correct). There is an incident I remember vividly. Earlier I used to pride myself over the fact that I did not get into conflicts. No one had told me what a big fool I was. I had a roommate in SE who had a habit of suddenly screaming at you in your face for no reason. First time he did it, I waited two days to tell him, that Varun my parents don’t shout at me and neither can you. But within a month he repeated it again. This time I waited two hours to express my disapproval. Then before another month had passed he repeated it again. This time even as he started shouting, I took one more step in his face and screamed back even louder. He never shouted again.

In my first year of college I was accepted into the Magazine Board at AIT. With one written test and three exhaustive and gruellling rounds of interview, the joke goes went that it is easier to crack a job interview than get into the magazine board. Publishing the magazine was just one of our tasks. We arranged treasure hunts, notice boards, started juicy rumours, set college dress codes for Valentines day and even had a betting organized on results of certain events. The Mag Board and AIT gave me opportunities to hone my talents.

From someone who wanted to do his M.Tech and be in research and development roles, I realized I absolutely relished leadership roles. So I became an MBA aspirant. I have written CAT two times but my performance has still not got me that dream call I desire.

Infosys is another step in the journey called life. While I had another offer ,I choose Infosys because of the tremendous learning possibility. I had hoped to be posted to Pune but man proposes, and Infosys disposes.

Mysore while tragically not being the hip and cool city like Pune allows me time to pursue my passions. I read on a regular basis every night. I have learnt how to cook. My French classes started yesterday and I now learn hindustaani classical musical every weekend.

From life I have learnt the lesson that not everything works out the way we want it to. Even after a month, my Saa (the music tone) is still not firm. But I and my teacher see progress. And I find hope.

Over to you Mr. Toastmaster.

”