The 77second Story

Its been more than a week and I hadn't written anything on my blog. I was wondering where my next blog post would come from( not having the net connection at home doesn't help), well the answer was a 77 second signal near Lakshminarayan Theatre. I saw a small kid reading a piece of paper, it reminded me of one of the incidents when I was in the sixth grade.
Our school teachers always encouraged us to participate in elocution competitions. I got selected through a preliminary round, ( how the hell did I get selected?) despite having no experience of public speaking. I got a speech written by a senior friend of mine on a piece of small paper. I carried it every where I went, and made sure I remember every word of it.
The elocution competitions were always well attended at our school.The auditorium is set up for the competition. Almost the entire school is watching. The biggest challenge was to always speak what you had prepared,if you forget your speech or get stuck, the audience are sure to give you a tough time speaking.
The morning of the competition I walked to the auditorium, the audience had already assembled (even though I knew that the numbers are  high, the size of the audience gave me goose bumps). A senior of mine walked up to me "How is your preparation?"
"I don't know about the preparation, but the crowd is huge"
"Well, that means that the applause will be really loud!"
Those words changed something in me, because I wasn't nervous anymore, to be honest my speech sounded like mugged up crap, but the applause was good. That particular incident, changed the extremely shy Shahid to the Shahid you people know today.

With the choice of our words we can change the lives of people, so it is very necessary that we use our words judiciously and carefully.

 I don't think that particular interaction wouldn't have been longer than 77 seconds itself. This is one lesson which I learned years later today during those 77 seconds.....

Footnotes:

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