The Murphy’s Law
Speech 1, Nvidia International Toastmasters Club
Level 1, Ice-breaker
Stories. Stories are all we are left with at the end of the day. As Tyrion Lannister of the Game Of Thrones says,
“What unites people? Armies? Gold? Flags?
Stories. There is nothing more important than a good story.”
But what good is a story without someone to share it with? Listeners, Fellow toastmasters and guests, are a rarity. And hence, I am grateful to you all for hearing me out.
I am going to share a rollercoaster journey and how it was a precursor to many future incidents in my life.
It was August 2014. After a couple of strenuous years of marathoning the rat race and long spans of chaos and uncertainties, I was finally out of high school and had a definitive next destination — college! The idea of a whole new, independent, and adventurous life thrilled me, and I was eager to plunge into it. The parting day arrived.
As any other sincere, conservative South Indian family would, my mother, grandpa and I left eons before the train arrival time for the railway station, with packed food that would sustain us for a whole week. We arrive and settle down at the platform. It is almost time for our train. Interestingly, we see a train with another number chugging into the platform and it was just 2 mins before our train’s arrival time. Banking our trust on the Indian Railiways, we continued to wait for our train, assuming it was delayed. Only that it had arrived and left, right in front of our wide-open eyes.
After a while, we were told that the train that previously arrived, the one with another train number, was supposedly our train as well. Only partially though. The Great Indian Railways had assigned 2 numbers to the same train. The first half, that would be dismantled and redirected mid-way, had one number and the other half, another. We were to travel in the second half, and never bothered to check the number on every compartment. Till then, I had heard of people missing trains because of being late. We were the first specimens to have reached the station much earlier, saw the train arriving and leaving without us, right under our nose!
Vexed, we barged out of the station, stopped, and boarded the first bus to Trichy that huddled in front of our eyes. Happy ending? Nah. The bus broke down. Not once. But at every other corner. After a long haul at an automobile workshop, i-lost-track-count-of number of break downs, and touring almost half of our state, we reached Trichy late in the evening.
The day was painful. Despite meticulous efforts and planning towards a smooth start at college, we missed the train, got into a god-forsaken bus that took us forever to reach Trichy; that too with all the heavy luggage. Nonetheless, we reached. We reached alive, and in one piece!
This incident taught me that Murphy’s law is beyond any of our control. Something or the other may go haywire and sully even the “best” planned situations. All that we can do is, accept it. Flow with it and enjoy lemonades when life has only lemons to offer.
Feedback:
- Good organisation, use of gestures and vocal modulation
- Interspersed humour.
- Can make better use of pauses
- Can speak slowly, for audience to grasp better