THE STORY OF AMATUL SAFI

It was May 2010, YLP mood at the Jubail Toastmasters Club. Venkat Devrajan was the Chief Coordinator. I was asked to mentor two children one of which was Amatul Safi the daughter of Mr. Mahmood and Mrs. Tahera Mahmood. Amatul had a younger brother who was a karate kid and his watchfulness seemed to me a trait of it. The family belonged to the state of Orissa in India.

As soon as the mentors were fixed, like every caring mother does, I received a call from Mrs. Tahera Mahmood so that the family could have a formal talk and get introduced with each other. Children are often shy when it comes to talking to a stranger and especially when it is a girl child. A girl child would always insist her mother to take the lead and set things right for her; the same was the case here. Mrs. Tahera, when she found that I was well versed with Hindi, she was happy for the reason that the communication during mentoring would not be a concern of worry.

The rendez-vous at their house started with a warm welcome. As we all settled down, Labeeb, Safi’s younger brother sat beside me. I gave them the primary explanation of what was Youth Leadership program. What were the phases Amatul we would be going through. There were four things to be done, first the ice-breaker speech, second the international speech, third the evaluation and lastly table topics.

The ice-breaker is a collection of memorable glimpses of one’s life. It is a self-introductory speech of 04 to 06 minutes. She did it well. Generally children find it easy to write about themselves but the real difficulty appears in writing an International speech; an international speech is a persuasive speech, a motivational speech or an inspirational speech.

One fine day I received a call from Mrs. Tahera asking me to help her out. As I inquired about the problem she told me that her daughter was complaining about not paying attention to her needs and that she preferred younger child Labeeb over her. Amatul wanted her mother to help her select a topic and a plot for the international speech; both were confused. I suggested why not consider the current scenario in the house for the speech content. I asked Amatul to write her feeling in whatever way she can. She eagerly wrote it and I meticulously developed it.

The story starts with a girl (Amatul) having preconceived thoughts, it revolves around an elderly character. At first she questions herself “What does a girl of 17 have in common with a man of 57?” she ignores this elderly figure who is her father’s friend whom she had never seen before. Few remarks from the elderly figure interests her and is drawn closer, later on she gets transformed and takes the right path. The story line was much closer to Amatul’s heart. I could she her best come out through her body language, command over English and well rehearsed delivery. She bagged the best speaker trophy. 

During the rehearsal Labeeb, Amatul's brother was a keen observer, and very much into it. He kept guessing about the elderly character (His father's friend); how come Amatul knows him and he doesn't? To quench his curiosity he surfed the net many times but couldn't get the answer. Unable to resist, he finally asked my "Who that person was?" I replied "it was me". The whole house bursted into laughter.

See you next time with THE STORY OF SREEJA.