The Power of Courage - A Speech

Speech Transcript:

Nelson Mandela said “I learned that courage was not the absence of fear but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear”.

Dear Toastmasters fellow members and guests today I will draw a picture of courage capturing its two shades – “action” and “restrain”.

12 year old Vijay was a great cricket lover but unfortunately he was blind by birth. His friends in school used to taunt and make fun of him but that never dampened Vijay’s indomitable spirit.

Vijay had a secret – a cricket bat with which he used to play with his father. His father knew that a blind boy cannot play cricket, but at the same time he never wanted to hurt Vijay’s feelings. So, he played with Vijay just to make him happy. Soon Vijay learnt to track the sound of the ball as it whipped through the air and bounced in front of him. His father was amazed when Vijay started hitting every ball just by following the sound. This was a secret until a friend of his discovered Vijay’s unique ability.

Next day in school students were busy passing the news of Vijay playing cricket. Some bullies challenged Vijay to play with them. Vijay had promised his father that he won’t play with anyone else, so he started to walk away avoiding the challenge. The bullies taunted him, they said “your father thought that you, a blind, can play cricket – what a fool”. Vijay would not tolerate a word against his father, his coach. He turned around and accepted the challenge. At that time Vijay was unaware that soon he would be facing a hard leather ball unlike the soft cricket balls with which he used to practice with his father.

The news of Vijay playing cricket at school soon reached his mother who called up his father in office. His father ran to the school and saw Vijay in the field, getting ready to face the ball. Vijay’s father jumped over the short fence to stop Vijay but something stopped him – the courage inside him. He came out of the field, stood behind the fence and shouted at Vijay “Come on son; hit it out of the park”.

Vijay heard his father, he tightened his grip on the bat and turned his ear towards the bowler. The first ball was a full toss, Vijay missed it completely. “Steady” his father whispered to himself holding onto the barbed wire on the fence. The second ball was a Yorker which Vijay was able to dig out just in time. The third ball jumped off the turf like a spitting cobra and ruptured Vijay’s left eyebrow. His head reeled, He could feel a trail of blood snaking down his eyes and he collapsed on the ground. His father didn’t move an inch, soft tears rolled down his eyes, he tightened his grip on the barbed wire already stained with his own blood and waited for his son to stand up. Vijay stood up, wiping the blood off his face…the fourth ball was another bouncer, he ducked in time saving his head. The fifth ball was directed at his rib cage, Vijay jumped up and knocked the ball down. The last ball was again a Yorker, this time Vijay could clearly hear the ball approaching him ripping through the air, he got under the ball and scooped it high over the bowler’s head. The ball went up high and dropped sharply on the fielder at the boundary rope. The fielder jumped, the ball brushed his finger and went over the boundary rope. It was a six.

Vijay’s father jumped over the fence, with open arms he ran into the field like a child clutching his son in a tight embrace. Vijay’s dark world was illuminated with joy, he broke into tears and said “thank you dad, for not stopping me”.

Friends, this is how Vijay demonstrated courage through his action while his father demonstrated courage through restrain. Both of them conquered the demon called fear and immortalized the message of Nelson Mandela.  

The Purpose of Life - A Speech

Speech Transcript:

A doctor was asked the question – “Who are you? Are you aware of the purpose of your life?” he answered – “ yes, I am a doctor and the purpose of my life is to save lives”. The same question was asked to another doctor and he replied – “ I am a guardian of human soul and the purpose of my life is to ensure that every human soul gets the best out of the body they are in – who do you think is going to do a better job?- the first doctor or the second one. Yes, the second doctor because it is profound from the purpose of his life that medicine is not just a profession for him – it is a passion.

I believe every human is born with a purpose in life – and it is our responsibility to find out the purpose. I will share the responses I got when I asked my friends what is their purpose of life.

Vinay, a businessman said….Hey, Sandeep you know how much I used to love Neha, the purpose of my life was to marry her. I married her, and I am happy.

I replied – So, the purpose of your life is to keep Neha happy, right?

Vinay answered back agitatedly “of course, she is happy, I mean….I give her 10000 rupees every month for shopping”

Another friend of mine, Jyoti, a fashion designer said….that her purpose of life is to settle down in Canada.

Neeraj, an IT professional said that his purpose of life is to buy a swanky pent house in New York City and have the best wines.

Wow, what purposes….you might find it amusing but most us think the same way.

Now let me turn the question around and ask – what is that one work you can do for 16 hours a day constantly without getting tired? Or What is that one thing you BELIEVE in the most? I am sure the answers would be quite different.

There is a relation between the purpose of life and what you believe.

What you believe is what you do, and what you do is the purpose of your life.

Let me tell you a short story…..

In a remote village, a young man of 28 years was recovering from a major illness due to which he lost his memory. A sudden flood swept the village leaving hundreds of people marooned on trees and roof tops. A wise old man came up to the young man and said “son, you are an army officer and you are the only person who can save the villagers stuck in the flood, please help them.” The young man jumped into the menacing waves and saved hundreds of lives. Later he came to know that he was not an army officer but was a very good swimmer. The wise old man instilled belief in the young man and he played the role of an army officer. That’s what belief can do to you.

Now I will share my belief and my purpose of life - I believe that practicing creativity can improve the quality of human life. What are we doing here – we are all practicing creativity and it has a positive influence on everyone’s life over here. I believe that only by practicing creativity we can overcome all our negative thoughts. So, my purpose of life is to influence human development through creativity.

Do you have a purpose in life? If not, write down your belief first and then find out what all should you do to practice your belief. Then that becomes the purpose of your life.

Don’t worry if no one cares about your belief. No one cared about what Mary Kom believed in. No one cared about what the Noble Laureate Kailash Satyarthi believed in. But they practiced their belief, every day and that became the purpose of their life.

I am sure you will also identify your belief and define the purpose of your life.

What makes a Great Team

“What makes a great team?” - The question kept me thinking for several days. People never forget to talk about leadership, motivation and empowerment while defining a great team. Although these are essential ingredients which go into building a successful team but a different perspective goes into building a “great team”.

Henry ford said “Coming together is a beginning. Keeping together is progress. Working together is success”....... I just want to add one more perspective to it – “Thinking together is greatness”.

What I feel is that “A great leader may build a great team but a great team will always give a great leader”. Now some people might debate, which comes first – the leader or the team. Let’s look at an example:

The famous Orpheus Chamber Orchestra of New York City has won the heart and minds of millions by staging the greatest performances ever, but “without a leader”. The leadership roles are taken up by members in turns while the rest of the members “thinks together” and contributes to create the magic in their performances.

Photo credit - Scott Maxwell

“Leadership” is a “top heavy” word and clearly discriminates the leader from the rest of the team. Although the role of a leader in a team is non-negotiable, the spectrum of leadership which nourishes collective thinking only has the right to achieve sustainable greatness. Some leaders feel tempted to act intelligent to establish their supremacy but an effective leader creates a collective opinion by allowing everyone to contribute their ideas.

A successful organisation is the one which has more market share but sustainable greatness is achieved by organisations which invest more in training, development and R&D creating intellectual and proprietary capital.

A great team is actually a group of great leaders who exercise “thinking leadership” to leverage team’s thinking ability and create magical synergy.

Innovate to stay competitive - a speech

Sharing my recent speech on how to use simple thoughts to innovate and stay competitive.

Speech Transcript:

It was the award night ceremony at our company. I was tense and nervous because along with 4 others, I was nominated for the coveted best manager of the year award. Five of us were close colleagues and sat on the same table eagerly waiting for the announcement. Everyone wished good luck to each other wearing their best smiles. Finally, the announcement was made and I was not the winner. The winner lifted the trophy amidst rapturous applause while we, the 4 losers drowned ourselves in copious amount of whisky at a pub. After drinking, all losers suddenly became best friends, we blamed the system and shared with each other how we felt from the bottom of our heart that one of us should have been the winner.

Later, I realized…..on that day we completely missed one point – the winner did things differently, he was an innovator.

Today I will discuss why innovation is no more just a “good to do” thing….but innovation is a must to stay competitive.

Why is innovation so necessary to stay competitive?

Because, more and more people are getting good education, there’s an explosion of free access to information, people are becoming more ambitious resulting in a situation where most of the things are equal among individuals……except the ability to innovate also called divergent thinking.

Now, Let us find out what should we do to innovate…

First let us understand the difference between creativity and innovation. Most of the time we use the words interchangeably but they are different. Creativity is the raw thought or idea that comes without being logical whereas innovation is the implementation of the idea and bringing it to a logical conclusion.

Mankind is designed to think creatively. Researchers believe that an average person gets around 50 to 70000 thoughts per day. I believe there are 3 primary kinds of thoughts – What, Why and How, most of the time we get “what” thoughts – for example…

What are the new concepts?

What is my role?

These thoughts are also triggers for creativity.  

The “why” thoughts are of two types – “bad why” and “good why”. Bad whys are all the negative thoughts…..for example….

“Why my salary is lesser than his?”

“Why should I do so much work?”

“Why my boss is not happy with me?”

But the “good whys” makes you challenge the obvious and helps your mind to explore. For example…

“Why do we always do it manually when this can be automated?”

“Why I am not losing weight even after dieting?”

We also get “How” thoughts – they are rare but these thoughts helps us analyze. We should always try to invoke this thought. For example…

“How can I improve sales?”

“How can I write better?”

“How can I reach my goal?”

You must have noticed that in all the examples I have used the word “I” because thoughts are always your own. For example….If your subordinate is coming late to office, you get a thought “Why is he coming late?” but once you ask the question to your subordinate “why are you late?” then it is no more a thought, it’s an action. We don’t want action during the idea generation stage. Just open the window of your mind and let the ideas come in freely.

Once you have generated enough ideas, you can start testing them to give shape to your innovation.

To sum up - encourage yourself to think, nurture the positive thoughts and stay competitive.

Remember, the sunshine you see was created millions of years ago in the sun’s core, it took millions of years for the sunshine to travel from the core to the surface of the sun and it reaches you in just 8 minutes.

Start preparing yourself and one day you will become the shining star.

Indian science fiction movies - a perspective

Traditionally, the genre of science fiction eluded the Indian film makers depriving the audience of quality sci-fi entertainment. What could be the reason for this? – Are Indian film makers scared of venturing into sci-fi? Is the Indian audience too premature to understand and appreciate quality science fiction? I jumped from one puddle of thought to another and gathered some information which I will share with you.

I was in my school when I first saw Shekhar Kapoor’s Mr. India – I was transfixed and blown out of my bloating imagination.  It is one of the biggest blockbusters in the Indian film industry. I never loved any villain more than Mogambo. The characters became immortal and so did their sharp and short, yet hard hitting dialogues. It was one of the first attempts to make a science fiction and people loved it because of its simplicity and grandeur. Shekhar Kapoor started it but I am disappointed that he never attempted another science fiction. But how Indian science fiction movies evolved from that time?

After an inordinate 20 years, Indian’s got a new science fiction hero – Krrish. The Krrish sequel was again a massive success. Robot (Enthiran) and Ra-One also pulled huge crowd to the theatres. Suddenly after 2006, the box office floodgates were thrown open by sci-fi geeks as Indian audience took a fresh look at the silver screen. With this kind of response, it is very clear that Indians enjoy science fiction, but they were denied the ultimate fantasy because of the myth – Indians don’t understand science fiction. This myth was completely busted by the phenomenal success of Avatar, directed by James Cameron. The movie grossed Rs.142 crores, beating Dabangg’s collections in India.

I think it is not the audience but the film makers who lack the love for science. The Indian movies I mentioned earlier in this article are also far below the international quality as far as inclusion of authentic scientific facts are concerned. According to me science fiction movies can be categorized into 3 broad categories – Physics, Biology and Geology.

Physics include topics such as space, gadget, artificial intelligence captured in films like Gravity and Matrix. Sci-fi movies with Biology as its central theme deals with subjects like extinct species, cloning, medicine – Jurassic Park and Sixth Day are examples of such movies. Geology based science fiction talks about natural calamities, weather change etc. – These are showcased in films like Volcano and Day After Tomorrow.  Now there is a fourth category – fantasy fiction which includes all superhero films like Spiderman, Superman and Harry Porter. Our Indian science fictions belong to the lower end of fantasy fiction because we have still not evolved from superheroes.

It’s time that the Indian film industry evolve to match the intellect of the Indian audience. You don’t have to be a science student to create quality science fiction movies – you just have to love science.  Steven Spielberg and James Cameron are both college dropouts but they love science, read science and then apply their imagination and creativity basis scientific facts. We have seen enough of flying cartoons – give us a break. I request the Indian film fraternity to read science journals and novels to come out with some genuine science fiction and not just petty fantasies. Science fiction helps to create interest and love for science among children and young adults. It broadens our imagination and enhances our understanding about scientific facts. We have started to see efforts being made and I am sure we will get what we want soon.