Session 82

"What do you want a meaning for? Life is a desire, not a meaning." - Charlie Chaplin.

This session of Elite Toastmasters was a blend of humour and philosophy, tied together by the TMOD's theme "Charlie Chaplin": his life, his comedy and his vision of life. Additionally, a workshop on humorous speech was the diamond on today's necklave of events.

The session was kicked off by the acting SAA TM Shaleen Basu, who energised the audience with the message Never Give Up, with an example of the lady from the railway station who became a co-singer with Himesh Reshamiya.

Acting President TM Rupasree Biswas welcomed all to the session with the interesting idea that for something new to form, something else has to break: for cultivation the soil has to break, for harvesting the crops have to break, for a seedling to sprout the seed has to break. We need to keep on breaking out of our mould if we want to transform. A good message, acting Prez.

TMOD Sarbodaman Mukherjee had chosen the theme Charlie Chaplin as mentioned. His easygoing manner and pleasant delivery settled everyone down to an evening of enjoyment. 

Today we were really blessed with a large number of guests and - wonder of wonders - most of them had been invited to attend by TM Akash! Kudos to your persuasive skills, TM Akash.

The General Evaluator TM Rajat Ray introduced the evaluation team of Grammarian, Ah-counter, Timer and Parliamentarian.

There was only one project speech scheduled today on Time Management and the evaluator read out the requirements of the speech, which required the speaker to identify her style of time management and work out how it can be bettered.

TM Daliya Thacker delivered her speech on managing time, recalling times of her life when she had little time management skills. She shared with us the various tools available for managing time better and hoped to improve in future following the same.

TM Ruddradev Roy Chowdhury, humorous speech champion, held a workshop on giving Humorous Speeches, perhaps the most diffcult type of speech to write and deliver. He gave both the concepts and examples of how to design humorous speeches, how to script and how to make the writing humorous even if a normal situation was being described. For those not naturally humorous, surely it was a very useful session. Even addition of humour in normal speeches can relieve monotony and all the concepts described can be applied there as well. A big thank you to TM Ruddradev.

After a short break, the table topic master Arijit Das took up the stage. He had made topics out of movies made by Charlie Chaplin, which was very interesting. The last speaker TM Vidwata, was, however, presented a doozie of a topic "Alpha Charlie", who sportingly took up the challenge and delivered a free association of ideas that held people spellbound. A very interesting session indeed.

The GE returned on stage and called upon the speech evaluator TM Abhishek Daga to give his comments on the speech delivered by TM Daliya Thacker. While praising her delivery, the evaluator suggested that the speaker describe more her personal experience and how she changed her style.

The team members of the GE gave their reports - Grammarian TM Geeta Raghani, Ah-counter TM Stuti Agarwal, Time TM Shubham Pande and Parliamentarian TM Akash.

GE also gave brief feedbacks to the table topic speakers on their speeches, congratulating the guests in particular who came up on stage and delivered coherent speeches.

The acting President closed the session after taking a few guest feedback and announcing the awards.

The day's awards were:
  • Best Role Player (aux):           TM Stuti (Ah-counter)
  • Best Role Player (main):         TM Sarbodaman (TMOD)
  • Best Table Topic (member):    TM Vidwata
  • Best Table Topic (guest):         Ms Debarati
  • Most Improved Speaker:          TM Daliya
See you all again on 7th September, same time, same place.

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