THE STORY OF RAJEEV PILLAI

Few meetings later at Al-Jude I was busy watching a speaker. He was in his Advance Communication doing, a project titled “Accepting an Award” from the Special Occasion manual. Throughout the speech the whole audience kept busting into bouts of laughter. I was a junior then not knowing much about Advance Communication but would certainly say I laughed to my heart’s content. For once I thought that Advance communication was an interesting area to venture in.

The impression so far formed about Advance Communication toppled upside down when TM Vasudhar Gopal appeared on stage to evaluated Rajeev Pillai’s speech. He took Rajeev to task for not seriously considering the objectives of the project. This was Rajeev and he continues to be so. He prefers to be what he wants to be.

He was the V. P. Education then, having finished writing my speech I would give him a call for rehearsal. Visiting Malls did not charm me. Morning cricket on week ends, at times music in the afternoon and writing speeches were my pass time. I tried to fill time gaps by doing something meaningful and worthwhile.

Addition of more reactants takes the chemical reaction to a higher level of equilibrium. The same thing happened to us, completion of every project raised us to a higher level of commitment and understanding. On completion of my fifth project when I told him that the script of my Tenth project was ready, he sensed the heat in me, he didn’t want that heat to subside. He immediately started looking for speech slots in other clubs. Within no time my ninth project was done.

Now lay the biggest hurdle. Completion of my tenth project, our involvement was heading to its peak. Completion of my tenth project bothered him more than it bothered me. I was going to break a record of a Lady Toastmaster “Raji Krishnan”. He very much knew her grace, her flair, her confidence and the speaker in her. For him breaking the record was appreciable but equally appreciable would be to reach somewhere near those quality of her. 

      

Every other day he would take me to a senior toastmaster for rehearsal, get those recommendations incorporated in my speech and rehearse it again. I wrote and rewrote the speech 6 times from 1450 words to 1040 words. He wanted it to be unique in all aspect. In my speech was an audience engaging act. He was worried about overshooting of time but when I handed over the stage to the Toastmaster of the day in 10 minutes and 26 seconds, his joy knew no bounds. It was a proud moment for me too.

Infancy is the most beautiful phase of life gracing both the mother and the child, generating never dying memories. Memories those we all relish in the future. The phase of my life with Rajeev was a similar one. See you next time with another story; A story of Dr George.