Aug - Oct ‘09 Volume 2

CSC Hyderabad Chapter Toastmasters Club 938828 | Area F1 | Division F | District 82

Speakers’Pen!

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EDITOR’S DESK...

Busy as bee for the last one month with multiple pro-jects to complete, and a mountain of expectations from project managers…Icing on the cake is to work on the newsletter as well. I’m lovin it. Here comes the second edition of our news letter, hoping to live up to the expectations of our club members and all our well wishers. We have incorpo-rated the valuable suggestions that we received for our first newsletter. Thanks to each and every person who took time to appreciate the work we did in our first newsletter. Thanks a ton to all the Toastmasters for their contribu-tions to this newsletter. I hope you all find this edition of newsletter as good as previous one, if not better. Let me leave you all with a nice quote to start with:

The ability to concentrate and to use your time well is everything if you want to succeed in business--or almost anywhere else for that mat-ter - -Lee Iacocca Happy reading :) —Srinivas Tripurari

EDITOR

SRINIVAS TRIPURARI

CLUB OFFICERS

PRESIDENT

Mr. ANOOP RAMANATHAN +91 97035 35550

VP EDUCATION Mr. SHAILESH TIKHAT

+91 99080 16253

VP MEMBERSHIP Mr. SREEJITH SREEKUMAR

+91 90520 00954

VP PUBLIC RELATIONS Mr. LATEEF AHMED KHAN

+91 98485 08040

SECRETARY Mr. MAMILLAPALLI P KUMAR

+91 99087 64441

TREASURER Mr. VENKATA PENUMARTHI

+91 99894 88018

SEARGENT-AT-ARMS Mr. SRIRAM S BODDU

+91 90524 78998

INS IDE TH IS

I S SUE :

Editor’s Desk 2

...Of The People 3

Leader Inside 4

Current Affairs 5

Ice Breaker 6

Cakes On The Way 7

Ghajini Syndrome 9

Vision Toastmasters 8

Membership Info 11

Know TM Arun 10

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get bogged down in yourself and your fam-ily, but with a little ef-fort, you will also be able to see what I see.

Toastmasters’ to me is also a lot of learning. Three years with toast-masters have taught me a lot, about people and also the speeches that other members give have opened my curios-ity from things such as cooking to politics to space travel!

The biggest eye opener came to me when I joined the committee along with 6 other peo-ple. I did not know much about any of them when I started, but within a short span of time I realized that I am working with some of the most dedicated and ridiculously fun-loving people I know !

This newsletter is a platform for this club and its members and I hope you have a won-derful time reading it, writing for it and en-gaging with your club through this medium.

I would first of all, thank Mahesh Reddy and Srinivas Tripurari, the people behind this maga-zine, for their dedication to the newsletter. It is no easy task and I consider it my privilege to be part of a club that has such dedicated members.

Keeping in line with the upcoming humorous contest and just con-cluded tall tales contest. I would like to tell you a small story.

I think I was 10 or 12 years old, when taking part on an extempore speech competition and I realized that everybody got the same topic which was "talk about your fa-vorite person". I could hear others in the compe-tition talking about Mother Teresa, Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru and other revered personalities. I was lis-tening to all this and thought... I have to do something different; I cannot follow the rest of the pack. Finally, I went on stage and talked about Tamil actor Rajinikant. I must admit that I know very little about the fa-mous actor and I made a

complete joke of myself on stage. But, guess what...I won the compe-tition and I believe it was only because I wanted to be unique!

Today, when I look at the club roster (which is now a permanent fixture on my workplace :) I see 30 individuals who are unique because of many decisions that brought them to this point. Each person has a riveting story, far beyond what any Hollywood or Bolly-wood flicks can offer, and I find that most im-portant aspect of this club and Toastmasters in general.

I would like you to share such experiences and explore the uniqueness of the people that sur-round you. It is easy to

...Of The People A N O O P R A M A N A T H A N

RECENT EVENTS

Club Humorous speech & Evaluation contest 16 Aug ‘09, 11AM -01 PM

Area F1 Humorous Speech & Evaluation Contest 29 Aug ‘09, 10am – 12pm

GREAT NEWS

PARTY T IME . .

• Arun Sridhar won the 2nd place in the Monsoon Tall Tales Contest of Toastmas-ters Area F1

• Parul is one Speech-craft away from being the only ACG in the whole division

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Leader Inside

Almost a century ago, a small frail looking Gujarati, very shy by na-ture and tongue tied in most social situations, found voice and strength in protest of color dis-crimination and foreign rule and stood up against the strongest em-pire at that time. With time he came to be known as a Mahatma and was accepted as a leader of

leaders. He, eventually, lead a na-tion to its freedom. When he started off in life did he have all the makings of a leader? Where was that leader hidden then? Did he take any leadership courses be-fore starting the protests against the perpetrators of tyranny? Leadership and its study are both probably older than civilization itself. Libraries around the world abound in literature on leadership. Sun Tzu, of the “Art of War” fame, lists out five fundamental virtues of a leader. These are intel-ligence, trustworthiness, humane-ness, courage, and discipline. John C Maxwell, leadership guru and author, in his book, “The 21 Indispensable Qualities of a Leader” identifies Character, Cha-risma, Commitment, Communica-tion, Competence, Courage, Dis-cernment, Focus, Generosity, Ini-tiative, Listening, Passion, Positive attitude, Problem solving, Rela-tionships, Responsibility, Security, Self-discipline, Servanthood, Teachability and Vision as the qualities of great leaders. Thus, if you were to ask the ques-

tion “What are the qualities of a good leader?” the answers are ready and at hand. Again, a perusal of such lists, together with some introspec-tion, leaves us with the feeling that we do have many of these qualities. In fact, you will be able to recall several incidents in your life where you have displayed one or more of these qualities. If you were to ask the question “Do I have these qualities?” the answer is many times a resounding “of course”, some-times a thoughtful “Yes”, but very rarely a clear “No”. Yet, the quest to be a leader goes on. Many of us are still stuck at the question “How do I be-come a leader?” There is some missing element one is still looking for. What might that be? The answer is very simple. You are asking the wrong question. The right question is “Which are the circum-stances when I AM a leader?” Go back into your past. Take a walk down the memory lane. When were you a leader? Was it in the playground when play-ing a team game? Was it in a difficult situation where friends were involved? What were the circumstances? You have already been a leader in your life. You may not have noticed, but yes, you have done things a leader does. Trust me, “If you are breathing you are a leader”. You become a leader when you

find out what you stand for; when you find out what your life is all about; when you find your inner calling. If you find that out, you be-come a leader of your own self. You become a leader amongst others. Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi found his life’s call-ing when he found that he could not stand discrimina-tion on the basis of color. It violated something very basic to the way he was. He had a cause to live for and to die for. The question always is what is it that fires you up and brings out that leader within you? I urge each and every one of you, who aspires to be a leader, to introspect and find out what is it really that makes you tick. In simplest terms, a leader is one who knows where he wants to go, and gets up, and goes. - John Erskine

S H I V K E S K A R

I am a leader by default, only because nature does not allow a vacuum. - Bishop Desmond Tutu

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It was a privilege and pleasure to have Mr. Chandrasekhara Rao Boddoju (Centre Head for CSC, Hyderabad) who accepted our in-vitation and attended the CSC TM meeting on 22nd July 2009. He conducted an engaging session on Time Management.

There were so many questions that the discussion almost doubled the allotted time. We sincerely Thank him for his valuable time.

Evaluation & Humorous Speech Contest 2009

Pic from OTP Aug ‘09

Awards for Evaluation & Humorous Speech Contest winners.. Aren’t they lovely?

Current AffairsCurrent AffairsCurrent AffairsCurrent Affairs

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right from marketing, sales, pur-chase, production, to customer visits and managing employees and motivating them.

All seemed well till I got married to Aabha in 2002. Aabha was born & brought up in Rajasthan. She brought with her a different perspective towards life. While I was passionate about work but was unorganized, she was very calm and planned every-thing in advance. I learnt from her virtues like honor, spontaneity, humility and to enjoy every mo-ment. The most important thing that I learnt from her was to know thyself and to listen to your heart.

I did just that. After 5 years in business, I took a big decision to move out of my own business & do what I enjoyed doing most… Programming! So I learnt SAP ABAP, joined a consultancy and worked for a few years with dif-ferent clients. While in business, I had developed a complex applica-tion to support our day to day op-erations in every aspect. As a re-sult, getting into ERP was a natu-ral advantage for me. The transi-tion turned out to be a herculean task; I had a family to take care of, I had pressure to succeed because I left behind a successful career. Besides, having been my own boss for years, I was used to giv-ing orders instead of following them. I stood tough and prevailed and gradually progressed up the corporate ladder. Finally, I joined CSC in Oct. 2008.

What I feel is that ‘if you find something to do that you really love, you will never have to work a single day’. That’s how I am enjoying my career’s 2nd innings, with a little mischief of-course. Thanks!

(smiling for few seconds…) You guessed it! I am in a mischievous mood today & mischief is what I did all my life. When I was 4, I got slapped from a lady for pulling her dupatta. At 6, I opened our TV to fix it. At 8, I locked myself in a room with a girl and I buried the watch that belongs to my mom, in our backyard when I couldn’t put it back together after opening it.

Fellow toastmasters and guests, with so much already broken, I am here to break ice with my speech ‘My life in 2 parts’, about a mischievous kid who didn’t want to grow up.

My Mom and Dad are from Rajasthan but I was born & brought up in Ma-harashtra. They gave me all the care, love & security that a child needs. What I am today is because of their

upbringing & enormous energy I in-herited from them. In fact, my mom was so strong that it took 5 nurses to hold her down when I was landing on planet earth.

As a child, I was always restless. Eve-rything that had a screw or a nut-bolt, would be opened by me at the first opportunity and after seeing inside, I would put it back together. If I could-n’t do that, it would find place in our backyard with all due respect and dig-nity. It was a herculean task for my Mom and Dad to bring me up as I went along with my creative destruc-tion each day.

That reminds me of my favorite comic strip Calvin & Hobbes who lives in an

imaginary world with imaginary friends. I too had a strong imagi-nation as a child. My fleet of GI Joe and He-Man toys would climb my wardrobe, glide across rope-ways and rescue my younger sis-ter’s Barbie doll, who would then have a fight with me. I always cherished those fights with my sister Swati.

Bicycle stunts, dance, music, gui-tar were some of my changing hobbies. When I was exposed to computer programming in school, I immediately fell for it. Com-puters became a passion for me, a passion which would stay for life.

We moved to different cities like Delhi and Kolhapur before finally settling down in Chandrapur. Here I did my Engineering in Electron-ics from RCERT in 2000. Imme-diately after graduation, I joined our family business of manufac-turing industrial plastic films. I enjoyed working there for a cou-ple of years and did everything required for a small business -

ICE BREAKERICE BREAKERICE BREAKERICE BREAKER S A N D E E P P O D D A R

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Lakshmi Narasimhulu Gudimella 3-Aug

Tarakeshwar Venkata Penumarthi 4-Aug

Anoop Ramanathan, CC 23-Aug

Deepika Kadel 23-Aug

Naga Ravi Kumar Vasamsetty 28-Aug

Srinivas Addala 10-Sep

Shivakumar Keskar 27-Sep

S. Arun Kumar, CL, CC 24-Oct

Lateef Ahmed Khan Mohammed 26-Oct

Mamillapalli P Kumar 26-Oct

Cakes on the way...

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"The difference between the impossible and the pos-sible lies in a person's de-termination." - Tommy Lasorda And that quote holds true for Vision Toastmasters. Vision started the year 2008-2009 with a handful of members. It would only sound amusing if I said that five out of the seven executive members had just delivered their ice break-ers and total member strength was just one short of a two digit number. The new executive committee (EC) had a bunch of prob-lems at hand – low turnout of members and guests, low quality meetings, reschedul-ing / cancellations etc. The first step towards resurrecting Vision was to improve the club meeting quality and make sure no role goes un-filled. The idea was to make sure more guests would turn up for the meetings looking at the quality. The toastmaster of the day was given free hand to select a theme which would be enjoyable to all. It soon turned out to be a healthy competition of sorts for most TMoDs to outdo the other in terms of innovation. All the members were men-tored to bring in creativity and humor in their roles and it made sure that every speaker had been mentored by a senior toastmaster. Some of our best meetings had themes based on friendship (on friendship day), smile (a laugh riot), April fool’s day, unspoken words, myth bust-

ers, the highlight being the reverse meeting! While these were exceptional ini-tiatives by the members, it was the EC which encouraged every idea. We once had a guest who sug-gested that we give a safety tip of the day and lo, we couldn’t say no to him! From that day, we have made it a rule to give out a safety tip. Whatever idea comes to the fore, we embrace it with great en-thusiasm, be it the introduction of chai and samosas or be it the standing ovation to the ice-breakers! Not only this, the EC discusses all the ‘best practices’ of

various clubs and implement them as a rule. It’s the consistency and manner of the meetings which peo-ple love the most about Vision. Although it may sound easy to keep implementing the ideas but we make sure every idea was given a logical thought, opinions were taken and a consensus was reached at. The success of any business or any organization lies in the leadership and every executive member in Vision has played their part in making the club a success. Without great motivators and visionaries

like TM Nitika and TM Deepak Mittal, the club wouldn’t have been anywhere closer to what Vision is today. A leader can make or break a team. As N.K. Rustomji quoted in his book Excellence in Man-agement, “Lead a team, em-power your people and they will follow. Give them a free hand and they will take up the responsibility even before you can imagine” and that is what they have done to this club. We may succeed, we may even fail, but to keep trying and improv-ing - is it not what Toastmas-ters is all about?! Now, looking at the year ahead, Vision has a greater responsi-bility – to remain where we stand and improve ourselves. Just like our IPP TM Deepak Mittal says, “We should not get success rule our heads…that should be the driving force to do better.” We are sure that Vision will keep its banner fly-ing high and continue to infuse spirit of toastmasters in every individual inside and outside the club.

VISION TOASTMASTERS

ABOUT V I S ION

TOASTMAST ERS

• Successfully con-ducted 1st reverse meeting

• Community Club led by young en-thusiasts

• Select Distin-guished Club

• www.meetup.com/vision

R A V I M I T T A L

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Two men met on the city street in the evening, and had a number of drinks together. The one who lived in the suburbs became confidential, and exhibited a string tied around a finger. "I don't dare to go home," he explained. "There's something my wife told me to do, without fail, and to make sure I wouldn't forget, she tied that string around my finger. But for the life of me I can't remember what the thing was I am to do. And I don't dare to go home!" A few days later the two men met again, this time in the afternoon. "Well," the one asked, "did you finally remember what that string was to remind you of?" The other showed great gloom in his expression, as he replied: "I didn't go home until the next night, just because I was scared, and then my wife told me what the string was for all right--she certainly did!" There was a note of pain in his voice. "The string was to remind me to be sure to come home early." The above conversation looks funny to listen but embarrassing in real life situation. We too forget our bike keys/jerkin while we go out in hurry, some time even we forgot to attend TM meetings. While travelling in plane/train, suddenly few thoughts disturb our mind. Before leaving home did you shut the gas valve? Did you switch off all appliances? Did you hide away the precious little jewel you use to keep on your desk? You are sure no more of a lot of small details. Did you indeed take all Precautions-on-leaving? Everything should be OK but you are left in doubt. Anyhow, it is now too

P R A D E E P P A T N A M

Ghajini syndrome

late to check and fix whatever was forgotten. If it is something serious you will have to bother the person you trust to check and fix it for you. Otherwise you forget it or you will be left with nagging anxiety until you come back, hoping nothing serious will come out of your carelessness. Next time, you promise to yourself, you will be more wary, you will start earlier, not in a hurry and you will do your preparations in a more orderly way. Nice intentions for sure but how should you behave to dispel those naughty thoughts once and for all? Well, if one thinks of it, the suggested method to follow is quite simple and there should be no problem in applying it. How do you think? You could do something to take care of your precautions-on-leaving, essentially preparing your own check list. It entails some extra work, it is right, but the payoff is increased security and peace of mind, so that it is well worth all the trouble. Just take a piece of paper and write down, long before you leave, all the Precautions-on-leaving you think essential to implement. You don’t need to tattoo like Amir as in his movie Ghajini, but simple idea like above would be more than handy :)

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KNOW TM ARUN

I intend to continue my communication track and learn a little more about corporate speeches and story-telling. I believe story-telling is a very powerful tool that busi-ness leaders can use to energize people. I also intend to participate in as many contests as I can.

Some message for all of us?

If you have been a TM for sometime but are not seeing the benefits then you aren’t doing one of the below: -Get a mentor you can work with -Give as many speeches as you can possibly give within and outside TM -Be persistent and keep doing the above two The benefits will follow. I guarantee you.

Toastmasters journey...I believe four years, how is it?

Three years. I started out as a reluctant TM who was not really into the move-ment. But things started changing around 2007 when I started seeing the benefits of TM in real life. I now intend to continue the TM journey as long as I can.

How did you benefit from Toastmasters?

From an inward looking introvert, I have become an introvert people can tolerate :) My self confi-dence has improved and so has my performance and relationships at work. As I say to new TM's, public speaking is the least im-portant thing you will gain from TM. Heard you are getting

married...would you like to say anything about it?

Didn’t see that one com-ing :) Yes I am tying the knot in Jan 2010. Krithika is from Madurai. We met through the arranged mar-riage route. Tell us something about you winning the Tall tales contest...how you are feeling?

Happy and vindicated. Vindicated because the other place winners were new TM's who were barely 2 months into TM. My victory shows that TM benefits someone like me who started out as a below average public speaker. It shows that TM works...all you need is a lot of pa-tience, hard work and a mentor you can work with. Asst Div governor - edu-cation and training ---any expectations from CSC toastmasters?

Nothing short of Presi-dents Distinguished Club. We can do it! You are a CC, CL al-ready...what are your plans in next one year?

Interviewed by Mahesh Pathigari

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New to Toastmasters? Not having much idea what Toastmasters is all about? Check out the website

www.toastmasters.org

Become the Speaker & Leader You Want to Be

Want to be a member of CSC TM? (open only to CSC employees)

For details contact your respective VP Membership:

• CSC Hyderabad Chapter Toastmasters (ssreekumar@csc.com) • CSC Noida Chapter Toastmasters (dhkr584922@gmail.com) • CSC Chennai Chapter Toastmasters (gsampath@csc.com)

Party u

ntil we

meet n

ext tim

e...Cheers