Icebreaker... Reflections on myself...

I joined the Toastmasters Club in my vicinity a couple of weeks back. I found it to be a really encouraging group of individuals who support you in your journey of being a better public speaker and making new friends in the process. Yesterday, I presented my first speech which is an introductory speech to help the members get to know you better. Here is what I presented (though I made up few lines on the way!)...

Good evening toastmasters and guests! How many of you here know my name? (Pause for answer) How many of you know what it means? Great… For those of you who don’t know… well today is your lucky day! Today I’ll be speaking about myself and I believe to know ourselves, we have to know our past and where we come from. To do this, I’ll tell you three small stories that have in some way, defined me as a person.

My first story begins a long long long (well not that long… I'm not that old)… it begins a long time ago in India. The day I was born, a lot of relatives and well-wishers came to see me and told my mom… “Oh how unfortunate… another girl! Don’t you wish it would have been a boy this time?”… I already had an elder sister so these people thought it was their "duty" to console my mother. In the midst of all this negativity… my grandfather said… “Are you kidding me? We are so happy that it’s a girl… She’s going to bring so much joy into our lives!”… And that folks is how I was named. “Sukh” in Sanskrit means “happiness”… that elusive thing we are always in pursuit of.

The reason I chose to tell this story is because it has stayed with me and taught me some things… First, a lot of times, at least in India, I would be told that I can’t do certain things because I am a girl. But its important to remember that none of it will be true. I can be anyone and do anything I want irrespective of my gender. The second thing I learnt was the value of name… that I had been named ‘Sukh’ for a purpose to bring happiness and that is what I try to do… It also motivates me to enjoy the little moments of happiness around me which we tend to forget during our busy lives. 

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The talk of happiness brings me to my next story… of family and relationships. I come from a very close-knit family with three sisters (oh yes, girls rule) and my parents … all of them made me the person I am today. In a country which can be really conservative, we were lucky that our parents taught us that being liberal does not mean disrespecting others’ choices but rather, respecting them. Where a lot of people in India “disapprove” of love marriages and a lot of them don’t even allow it, they accepted it with all their hearts (of course that is a story for another time). Last year when I got married, my father told my father-in-law… “You’re lucky, you are getting my favorite daughter as a part of your family.” Yeah I know… parents are probably supposed to say that about their children.

But I carried it in my heart as I stepped into a new, unknown life. That is because I am not perfect by any means. I’m an introvert who finds it difficult to make new friends, who says the wrong things at the wrong place a lot of times, who doesn’t know how to drive a car, who is really scared of the dark (Wow this could take up a lot of time)! But whenever I remember my dad’s line… it makes me feel that there are people for whom I am perfect. In a world that brings me face to face with me my shortcomings every day, this one instance brings a smile on my face.

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Coming to my last story… How important is career for you? Most would say… very important because it’s the way we earn our living, it helps us accomplish our professional goals. For me, my career has always been important. I was always into Computer Science even as a kid and I got to work in the field I was interested in. Ever since I completed college, I had been working. Last year when I moved to the United States, I was a dependent on my husband’s visa so I couldn’t work but I was taking all the steps to ensure that I could start working again.

While my husband and my family supported my view, a lot of people’s reaction was… “Why would you want to work? Your husband is already earning, you could just look after the house”. Of course I didn’t listen to all that but that is what my last story is. Why is it that a woman’s career is dispensable? Why can’t she do both and not choose one over the other? That is the thought I want to end with today because it is an important part of my personality… my belief that everyone is equal and that is what we should strive towards.

Thank you!