Erudite Roulette: Dancing Dreams - TM Tanuja, Leaders Garden Tooastmasters

TM Tanuja tackles this topic after the original nominee could not complete it due to a lack of time. 

DANCING DREAMS

This vision is a recurring one, same place, pitch dark ambience, I am moving around in different directions. Am I dancing? But, where is the music? 

Yes, the place looks like a pub, but since it's pitch dark, I couldn’t really understand how the ambience is. But, yeah I am moving like almost dancing, so, yes I think I am in a pub, dancing. Why there isn’t any music? And how am I dancing without music? Why there is no one with me? What am I doing alone in a pub and that too dancing alone without music? How weird is that!

And, why am I scared? Shouldn’t I be happy while dancing?

Oh no! I can see it now. It’s all visible. It’s no more a pitch dark room. I can see the aerial view of the city. I am going horizontally, I performed a somersault, a backwards one, a forward flip, now I am going vertically down, I can feel the freefall. But how did I reach here?

I am going down at the speed of 200 km/h. I am going to hit the ground soon and I am going to hit my back and bum very badly. The thought itself is making me sick and soon enough I am going to be sick, very sick.

But, wait, I have a parachute with me, so I can descend slowly at my sweet pace and land successfully. But, how does this work? There must be some clip, a switch to flip it open. Yes, I got it. Wonderful! Now, I can enjoy the aerial view with freefall. And here I come, all set to land.

Whoa! I planned to land but there is no land, and I am going to hit the water. Splash! Why did I leave my swimming halfway? I should have learnt it and it could have saved me from drowning today. I am not able to breathe; I can feel the water in my mouth, throat, lungs and everywhere else. I am going to die soon. I never imagined a solitary ending to my happening life. Bye, life!

“How many times have I told you to switch off the light before going to bed? You never listen to me. You lazy bum. Now get up. It's 10 AM madam. We have to attend a Toastmasters meeting. This girl is so crazy!”

Who is it? Wasn’t I all alone, about to die? Whoa! Splash again! It was a dream. I didn’t hit the surface of water instead a bucket of water hit my face. I am alive. *Relieved*. My roommate is cursing me, but I love her, she saved me from dying today, and I hate her at the same time because she brought my adventurous and dancing dream to an end.

Topic given by TM Manoj Guru

Erudite Roulette: Discovering Silence - TM Tanuja, Leader's Garden Toastmasters

Why can’t you shut up and sit back for a moment? Why it always have to be about you? Why the heck you don’t let me breathe for a moment? These are the questions I always asked her.
She made my life miserable. I always had to listen to her. No matter if she is right or not, I had to do what she wanted me to do. I always wanted her to be silent; I always wanted her to be quiet. But, wait….Does being silent and being quiet have same meaning? I read it in a novel by a very famous writer, “Quiet is peace. Tranquility. Quiet is turning down the volume knob on life. Silence is pushing the off button. Shutting it down. All of it.”
Yes, that is it; I wanted her to be quiet, to take a pause, to turn down the volume, to slow down her pace. I needed a comma, not a full stop. But, what did I get? Who is responsible for this? Why is she not talking to me anymore? I need her, I need her suggestions, and I need her interferences in every decision of my life.
Why is this silence killing me? Silence is most powerful, because we never expect silence, we expect words, actions, reactions; we have learnt, “Each and every action has equal and opposite reaction” but no one ever taught us, that silence as reaction to an action can be toxic, toxic to such an extent that it can kill your enemies and at times it can kill you and right now it’s killing me.
I wanted my inner self to be quiet, because I thought I can do better without her, I needed a break because I felt it’s her who is taking control over my life but I was wrong, she was there to help me, to give me options in life. It was her who made my subjective life objective, I always had options like in a multiple choice question, but she never decided what is right and what is wrong for me, she always left it to me, to decide.
I realized this when it went silence, I realized silence is powerful, more powerful than any other weapon. It is important to know oneself, it is important to attain peace, but yet it is so hard learning to live in silence.
So, let your inner self wander, let it travel the world, let it be herself, talk to her, listen to her, only then you can attain tranquility, only then you can connect to your outer hemisphere, only then you can bring out your intellect and relate the same to the world because your soul is the fastest medium of connection to your surroundings.
Discover the silence inside you and never let it turn off the intellect inside, go crazy with your inner self and no silence of outer world can ever make you feel solitary.

Topic given by: TM Srihari

Erudite Roulette - Life Goes On, Come What May! - TM Avinash, Leaders Garden Toastmasters

Somebody asked me – “Which is your favorite comic character?”

I said- “Undoubtedly Joker!”

Then he was amused and asked again- “What? A psychopath! A negative character?”

I replied- “We all know that Mr. J. is an antagonist. He is the clown prince of crime. It’s his job. But what I love in his character is he has emotions, but he is not a slave of emotions. Whatever he does is just to enjoy. He doesn’t care about the moment which is yet to come and he doesn’t think of what he did in past. Basically, he has no regrets about what he did.”

The guy was totally silent after my answer. He only uttered –“I don’t know what to say”.

The same thing happens in our life too. But we are so attached to materialistic things that we restrain ourselves to come out of the trauma. I heard many people saying in their terrifying moments - “I am a failure. I couldn’t do ‘this’ thing or ‘that’ ”. I used to ask them “What did you want to be?” The answers amaze me almost all the time. It’s like you wanted to be an engineer, but became a farmer and planted a mango tree wishing to get pineapple. Isn’t it an irony? You didn’t live in your moment and you planted your tree of sorrow and now blaming the Almighty.

Another weird thing is our emotion. You fall in love. You broke. And most people are stuck in that relationship after that. It doesn’t show your love is true. It shows that your knowledge about life is very less. Because life goes on. When you lose something (emotional) in life and are searching to get back; it’s similar to finding a needle in a haystack. The chances are rare that you will get it back.

I am not telling you to be emotionless. Everyone would have faced failure or sorrow. But we can’t be slaves of emotions (even though we want to). I have seen cases where father lost his only son. You can’t measure his pain and sorrow and suffering. But, as they say “Time is the biggest healer”. If you always think ‘Winter is coming’; you will lose the bursting beauty of fall. Life goes on. As time passes it teaches you how to survive without a particular person or particular relation. All you need to do is match you steps with time.

Discover your inner silence in the outer noise. Set yourself free, give it all away. Be super awesome. Be a child who smiles without a reason and we smile just by looking at him. Enjoy every single moment as your last bite. Live every single day as your dancing dreams. You will find the doorway to paradise in your life itself. Life gives us multiple chances to be happy, all we need to do is forget the moment we lost and use the moment where we are at. Because, when it rains, it rains equally on everyone. Some store the rainwater, some not. The one, who stores, gets the benefit. Here, the point is, everyone can do it. So, All I want to say is; the moment, the time, the life we living in won’t stop. It goes on. Live it or lose it, it’s up to us.

“LIFE GOES ON; COME WHAT MAY. LIVE EVERY DAY LIKE A HEYDAY.”


Topic given by: TM Bhumika