Toastmasters International is a well-known nonprofit educational organization that operates clubs worldwide for the purpose of promoting communication, public speaking and leadership. The first speech that a member is supposed to start off with is the Icebreaker speech whose objective is to introduce the speaker to club. I joined Agnels Toastmasters club in Mumbai in the midst of the global pandemic - due to which this speech was delivered in an online mode. It was a nerve-wracking experience yet wholesome experience. The icing on the cake was that I ended up winning the Best Speaker award that night!
If my life was a song, it would be the chaotic notes of a Tony Kakkar single. If my life was a food, it would be the amicable, all-complementing Domino’s garlic bread. And if my life was a book, it would remain untranslated. You ask why? Well, Good Evening, Susandhya, Guten Abend to all you esteemed Toastmasters – and welcome to my story!
Almost 23 years ago, I was born in Kolkata – the city of old worldly charm. Toddler Meghna was a happy kid – crying, pooping & slurping my way through bowls of cerelac, I grew up – a single child born to the two most perennially working parents of this planet. But it was from them, that I learnt my mother tongue Bangla. Bangla was the language that first hit my ears, the language that I learnt to cry in & later to speak, and now, many years later still fall back to at moments of candid vulnerability, or at times when I have to cry out “Uri Baba” at the touch of a too-hot bhatura.
All went steady for the next few years, until my parents – young professionals at that time – decided to move to Mumbai. For a starry-eyed 7 year old kid, the city of dreams seemed to open its arms in welcome & so did its people. In my new all-English fancy ICSE school, my class teacher had 2 rules –
- No chitchatting &
- No chitchatting in Hindi I was the teachers’ pet – not because I completed those confounding sets of homework assignments on time, but because, in the hue and cry of moving cities, the Bengali in me had never learnt to speak any Hindi!
Meghna 0, Language 1
Fitting in was no cakewalk, but what all Hindi tutors deemed impossible, Sony Entertainment Television achieved through its crash course in Hindi with nothing but a regular dose of Pavitra Rishta at 9 PM daily. Marathi was a completely different story – however hard I tried I could never go beyond the basics of ikde, tikde, maage & pude.
Meghna 0, Language 2
Struggling along, life went on & I soon found myself ikde-tikde-ing towards what’s Mecca for the clueless Indian student community – Engineering! After 2 whole years of gut-wrenching, soul-sucking grind through the infamous JEE-Mains & JEE-Advanced, I found myself at the golden gates of the magnificent IIT – Indian Institute of Technology Bhubaneswar. I thought to myself – “My life is set!”, but little did I know that this was to be a lesson in humility as I fell face first into Odia-land. People said Odia as a language had ample similarities with Bengali, fueled by which I used to converse in Odia with an innate confidence.
There used to be a truck that ferried food to and fro our hostel messes. To get a ride on our way back from college, we used to ambush it enroute & hop in, asking the young driver “Shopping Complex jibo? Will you go to the Shopping Complex?”. It took me 2 years & 1 real Odia friend to realize that what I had been using instead was “Shopping Complex jiba?” which literally translated to “Shopping Complex? Let’s go!”. Now, the puzzled uncomfortable expressions on the truck driver’s face make a lot more sense. No, I wish I was joking.
Meghna 0, Language 3
College days flew past, with me failing at one language after another. I moved to Germany for some part of my semester and the only German I picked up is “Bitte English” meaning “English please!”. At college, I also met the love of my life, or so my 22 year old self hopes & he is as far from my tolerable language spectrum as RCB is from lifting the trophy at any IPL finals. He is a Malayali & I have already made peace with the fact that my vocabulary would begin at “idli” & end at “Malayalam illa!”.
Meghna 0, Language – why are we still keeping count?
How ironical is it, that eventually I wound up as a software developer – learning the nuances of 1 new programming language every day at work. Turns out, I was just bad at the human languages, I’m doing fine with the machines.
While not having been able to learn all of the languages that I could have is a ship that’s long sailed, here I am at Agnel Toastmasters, aiming to conquer at least one of those. With this icebreaker, I have taken my first step forward – I have scooped up my ice, ground it into pieces, poured kala-khatta all over & served to you – a slice of my life. I hope you enjoyed! And if you have, what can I say, it’s just Meghna 1 Language 0.
