(Given below is the transcript of a speech I made at the concluding ceremony of the 8 weeks long Youth Leadership Program (YLP) for school students held in Jubail, Saudi Arabia in January 2012)
Dear YLP Coordinator, Fellow Toastmasters and my dear students
Good Evening!
Today you are concluding your first and possibly the most important chapter in your public speaking training. I am sure that the lessons you have learned in this Global Toastmasters YLP would help you to power your progress in life.
Apart from communication skills , I thought on this occasion to dwell upon SIX other FACTORS you could imbibe at an early stage to achieve six sigma perfection in your life.
The first one isKNOW
Every morning and evening in Monticello, his home in Virginia, Thomas Jefferson measured the temperature and atmospheric pressure. He owned hundreds of slaves but this Jefferson did himself, to be aware of what was around him. We are an indoors culture, especially in Saudi, and that is one reason we invent so little. Pradip Krishen , the husband of Arundhati Roy, wrote a book on the trees of Delhi, but few of us can identify the trees or the birds around us. We simply lack the curiosity to know them.
Thomas Edison’s perspiration wouldn’t have produced marketable incandescent light bulbs without some other factors. Curiosity was his greatest strength: “If I try this, what will happen?” Now, repeat 10,000 times. Thomas Edison would NEVER have gotten 1093 patents without a mountain of curiosity. A man without curiosity is spiritually dead. Even when your passion is low, curiosity can be a calming diversion. If passion is a tower of flame, then curiosity is a modest spark—and I believe , we can almost always summon up a modest spark of interest about something. The urge to know is one of the most important assets of a cultivated human being. Do cultivate this urge.
The second one is ‘MAKE’
In the period of their intellectual maturity, Tolstoy began making shoes and Gandhi began to make fabric. These two very great men decided that the most noble thing a man could do was to work with his hands. Consider making small things, useful things, like a bench or a wooden spatula or a small vanity bag or wallet. Such work is uncommon in our culture, but Indians were once great craftsmen, so it lurks in your blood. Make some models for science exhibitions, draw a painting, sculpt a figurine . Create something that is useful or artistic. There is an ineffable pleasure in crafting one’s own creations.
The third one is ‘FIX’
When we immigrated to Canada, we moved to a 2 bed room apartment in Toronto. As part of furnishing our apartment, we bought couple of book shelves from Walmart . As you know, most of the such things come in disassembled condition and you have to sit patiently , apply your mind and reassemble it fixing each piece in its right place. Honestly, I was poor in this task while my wife and my elder son did it with perfect ease. Even today my wife taunts me and say- “ Who awarded you the engineering degree”? So, beware of handing over to me something to fix or repair . It would be like feeding something to a shredding machine.
One thing that separates Indians from Europeans is our helplessness before breakdowns. Our absolute reliance on plumber, mechanic, chaiwallah and IT man means that we understand little about the way things work, their mechanics. In western countries like Canada, every male is self-reliant and is often a plumber, a car mechanic, a carpenter electrician and a house painter molded into one . They enjoy fixing things themselves. Merely disassembling the basic parts of something and putting it together again will bring knowledge. America’s high schools have something called “shop class” where all students learn how to work with wood and metal. We don’t and must teach ourselves to fix broken things.
The fourth one is ‘GROW’
When I was child, my father used to take me to our paddy fields and the fertile land around our house. We used to grow sweet potatoes, tapiocas, plantains and many tubers. I was there right from the seeding stage and I still remember the wonder in my eyes when the first bulb or seedling appeared in the soil . I used to water them. The biggest thrill was to harvest and see the size and shape of the tubers that got hatched beneath the soil. My joy knew no bounds. I relived that joy of growing something out of one’s own soil while reading a very beautiful book titled “Life and Times of Michael K” by the South African Nobel Laureate J M Coetzee. Even if it is just one pot or a little patch, to plant, nurture and harvest a living organism is something all of us should experience. Work with your hands and cultivate something in your home garden. Few things are as rewarding to man as being able to grow food, or flowers.
The fifth one is ‘SING’
Music is an expression. Expression of what? Emotion. The melodic instruments like guitar, violin and flute evoke emotion by imitating the voice. The percussive instrument—the drum—imitates the rhythms of life’s movements: breathing, walking, dancing. In the hierarchy of musical instruments, the human voice is ranked No. 1. The Hindu-Muslim vocal tradition of north India is the single most expressive form of music in the world (this superlative isn’t true of Indian dance). So is the case with western classical music ranging from Beethoven, Mozart, Brahms, Schubert and the like to modern composers like Debussy, Schoenberg and Sibelius. Learning and appreciating any kind of soulful music will enrich your life as few things can. Though my voice is hardly velvety, when occasion demands, I have learned to sing at least a few Kathakali Stazas. However, today your YLP coordinator Toastmaster Safire has taken all precautions to ensure that I won’t yield to that temptation.
The last and the most important one is ‘READ’
When Benjamin Franklin, the great statesman, inventor and scientist was dining out in Paris, a guest posed a question to all. “What condition of man deserves Pity”? Each guest proposed an example of pitiable condition. When Franklin’s turn came, he said “A lonesome old man on a rainy day who does not know how to read.”
When I was in my 6th grade, my father gifted me the first volume of Encyclopedia in Malayalam language. My mother, who was a teacher, told me that she was sending an amount from her meager salary on a monthly basis so that I could own a full set of encyclopedia. Fellow Youth Leaders, I must honestly confess today that life happened to me just because I turned those pages.
Of all the diversions of life, there is none so proper to fill up its empty spaces as the reading of useful and entertaining authors.
The failure to read good books both enfeebles the vision and strengthens our most fatal tendency—the tendency of that frog in the well.
There are books so alive that you feel that you are engaging in silent conversation with them. You’re always afraid that while you weren’t reading, the book and its characters have undergone change. It appears to have shifted like a river; while you went on living, it went on living too, and like a river moved on and moved away. As Samuel Johsnon rightly said, “A writer only begins a book. A reader finishes it”
Reading is a mental trip through an author’s mind. It helps us to experience many things through the development of our imagination. It allows us to go places we might not ever go. In fact, reading is a discount ticket to everywhere.
Dear Youth Leaders- Read..read..read until your eye lashes are tired with fatigue
That concludes my six sigma for your life.
It is my sincere wish that learning these practical traits can bring in triumphant transformation and enrichment to your life evermore.
Good luck and good night!
PS:
Here is a newspaper report on the event
pgrnair.com 