(Posted below is a Valedictory  speech that I gave early this year to a group of school students in the 9-12th grade who had participated in a Youth Leadership program, a well-structured communication and leadership training program lasting 8 weeks , conducted by Global Toastmasters Club in Jubail.)

Dear Club President, Fellow Toastmasters and my dear Youth Leaders

Good Evening!

Let me at the outset congratulate Global Toastmasters for wonderfully orchestrating this Youth Leadership Program that has helped many students to learn the rudiments of public speaking.

Tonight, I wish to share with you two incidents of my school days and a couple of other observations relating to this program.

When I was a grade 6th student, I began a love affair with a beautiful girl in my class.  Well, this girl’s mother was a teacher in the school where I studied and was a close friend of my mother , who was also incidentally a teacher there. So, in all my sincerity, I had thought it would be a perfect future alliance as both the families knew each other very well. The girl used come to my home with her lunch box to have a leisurely lunch as the school was located nearby. I would watch her taking lunch and after the lunch she would go to the pond in our compound to wash her tiffin box and then would straight away proceed back to the school. One day, I decided to write a detailed love letter to her. Like a good speech, it had a captivating introduction, a persuasive body and a pleading conclusion. The next day, as soon as she came back from the pond after washing her tiffin box, I gave her that letter. She took it and left immediately. I followed her with my eyes as she went to the school.I could see her reading it  as she walked along and finally she folded the letter and secretly kept it back in her lunch box. That was perfect and I was very happy. On that night at 9 PM, my mother came to my room and showed me my letter and asked whether I had written it. The rest is history. My parents took turns in caning me. That night I literally realized the pain of love.

That was my first set back in communication. That taught me a lesson that communication strategy has to be appropriate for each occasion. If I had developed my oral communication skills through a YLP like this, I would have then used  my body language, vocal variety and language skills to woo her. Well, I don’t know whether I realized it or not, the next year I won the first prize in the elocution competition and I got a violet soap box as a present from the school. Till early 90’s I had that soap box in our ancestral home and then someone thought of putting it to better use and I haven’t seen it after that. So, my dear Youth leaders, with YLP under your fore, you can be sure of avoiding such  setbacks. I can see the smile of confidence on your faces.

Now, let me share with you the second incident. When I was studying in the fourth grade in the same ordinary Malayalam Medium school at Vayalar (near Alleppey), I had a classmate named Sadasivan. He used to sit next to me. Every day, I would go to school with pocketful of guava and he would come with juicy mangoes. We would secretly exchange it while the classes were in progress. Notwithstanding our pretty pranks, Sadasivan was the most brilliant boy in the class and was the pet of our Maths teacher whereas I would duck my face when the teacher looked for volunteers to solve a problem on the black board. Years passed by and we parted our ways. A few years after I got my job as an Executive Trainee engineer in FACT, one evening I was returning to my village for a weekend. I got down from the bus and thought of walking a KM to reach my home. As I approached my village, I saw from a distance a wheel cart loaded with vegetables approaching a grocery shop. The man who pulled the cart wore a turban and had a haggard look. Life’s labors had prematurely aged him. As I came near him, he started smiling at me- one of the most hearty and utterly candid smiles I remember in my life. I struggled hard to identify the face behind the face. It was my Sadasivan.

Dear Youth leaders, opportunities for growth and achievement in life do not come to everyone even if you are more talented, more intelligent, smarter and hard working than my Sadasivan. Your destiny is often shaped by your circumstances. They are often more powerful than you. Perhaps the 24 students who had the opportunity to hone communication and leadership skills during the past 8 weeks in this YLP may not be the best and the most deserving of all the students in their schools. Consider that you were the luckiest students to benefit from this program and have that sense of gratitude to Global Toastmasters for giving you this opportunity. Remember that this club has spent time,money and energy for your self-improvement.

Mao Zedong once said -If you want to know the taste of a pear, you must change the pear by eating it yourself. All genuine knowledge originates in direct experience. This is very true in Toastmasters. You as young leaders got direct experience and knowledge on how to prepare and deliver a speech through this program. YLP that concludes today has given you the wings. I believe that wings are more important many other things. If you exercise them, you are going to excel in your life. I didn’t intentionally say succeed, as I don’t believe much in success. You can become a success tomorrow, if you win the Dubai festival lottery or You are made the anchor of “Kon Benega Karorpathi”. You as youths are more likely to be carried away by the successes of celebrities like Shahrukhan or Preity Zinta. Success has no permanence. But excellence has. Excellence is an art won by training and habituation. It is the gradual result of always striving to do things better. That is why we, the Toastmasters, believe that building a better YOU is the key to excellence. The quality of a person’s life is in direct proportion to his commitment to excellence, regardless of his chosen field of endeavor. Excellence is an intrinsic quality. Even when your body wrinkle like Madina dates, it will still carry that juicy essence called excellence. It is a growth within you like the blooming of a flower. The only difference is that that flower never wilts. My dear student friends- go for excellence in your life. It will help you to do ordinary things extraordinarily well.