DECEMBER 2013

Issue 6 , Volume 7

ICAB Voice

Communicate & Articulate http://icab.toastmastersclubs.org

ICAB WITH KPMG AND ADHARI TOASTMASTERS

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ICAB TOASTMASTERS CLUB

Club Number: 824350

Area 76, Division A, District 20

Issue 6 dated 03 January 2014

Volume 7

Editor Mohit Malkani

Publisher C.A. Gopalakrishnan

Executive Committee

President CA Gopalakrishnan 39569405

VP - Education

Uday Shanbhag 39276481

VP - Membership

Sridhar Seethapa-thy 39624908

VP - Public Relations

Charles Itty 39247453

Secretary Radesh Krishna 33477955

Treasurer Kurian Thomas 36315777

Sergeant at Arms Amin Mansuri 33570354

Past President & Mentor

BVS Prathap 39204169

INSIDE THIS ISSUE Page No.

From the President’s Desk 2

The Editorial 3

Letters to the Editor 3-4

Welcome to the ICAB family 4

Awardees in regular meetings 5

A Life’s lesson from a mentor 6

Vindication 7

CC Completion 7

How to get the best out of Toast-

masters 8

Various December meeting

highlights 9

ICAB VOICE Article contributors 9

Protect to protect your democracy

In India 10-11

Happy Birthday ICABers 11

ICABers –Let’s Meet 12

ICAB Voice was awarded the Capti-vating Communique award for 2012-2013 and 2011-2012. Further, ICAB Voice ennobled the Best Newsletter award in Division A for 2012-2013. Previously, ICAB Voice was adjudged “Second Best” in District 79 in 2008-09 and it was awarded fifth place during 2007-08.

Good Bye 2013!!!

Welcome 2014!!!

From the President’s Desk

Dear Toastmasters, And so we say Good Bye 2013!!!! When I look back I see an eventful year of losses. We lost our beloved, Manna Dey, The Great Mandela and so many forever not to return. As for the Club we have at least temporarily lost our versatile leader DTM Muralidhar and another DTM in the making TM Sivakumar. Two pillars of the Club walking away in the year. And I am sure you will agree with me that this was a year of losses. But is that all? No. No. We had our stalwarts winning a grand sweep in the Area con-tests. We had our Champions representing the club at the Division and District com-petitions. It was a proud moment for all of us. We have old and new members who have the potential of becoming the International Champion speakers. What is required is some commitment, guidance and hard work. I am sure soon we will have an International Champion from our club. The winning habit is coming closer to us. Then we had one of our Past Presidents becoming the Area Governor of Area 76. It only showed it is not only losses that we have. We do have a day for every night and so on it goes. For everything perceived bad, something good is happening, whether we accept it or not. Life is much simpler when we accept things as they are and do our best and move on. We also had the privilege of being hosted by the KPMG Toastmasters Club in a joint meeting with Adhari Toastmasters Club. I am sure all the members who attended the meeting enjoyed every bit of it. And for those who did not, you will always have an-other chance. I would like to thank personally and on behalf of our club every mem-ber of KPMG and especially TM Srilatha for hosting us. We also had our Sponsor Mentor CTM George Thomas visiting us and expressing how far we have come, coming all the way from Australia. On a personal front, I had the honour of becoming the President of the prestigious ICAB Toastmasters Club. It is the New Year and time for new resolutions. I request you all to make the resolu-tion of attending ICAB meetings taking part actively and consistently and last but not the least update the manuals on time and pray God for all your resolutions to come true.

I take this opportunity to wish you all a VERY HAPPY HEALTHY WEALTHY PROSPEROUS

SUCCESSFUL EVENTFUL NEW YEAR. God Bless us all !!!!

Yours

TM Gopal

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Our Presidents message summed up several up and downs during 2013. We have had an eventful month with the appearance of a special guest from Australia CTM George Thomas who was our clubs first mentor unveiling the Novem-ber issue of ICAB VOICE , the completion of the final project of our very own TM aspiring to be DTM and the first joint meeting with other clubs since I became a member in January 2013. This is a very good back-drop to the run-up towards the contest season, a lot of the credit for which goes to our VP Education TM Uday Shanbhag. Toastmasters club meetings is also a great place to make friends. I am sad to say that one of the friends I was fortunate to make, TM Anil Bhatta, would be leav-ing us in January to join his family back in Bangalore. Our best wishes go out to him for his future endeav-ours. I sincerely hope that he will find a way to main-tain a sustained contact with his club friends. One has often heard during the ICAB meetings that “just ask the mentors-they are waiting to help”. So I decided to stretch out, requesting mentors for articles for ICAB Voice. And Lo and behold, within a minute of my request, I received an article from TM Dilip Jain. It follows for your reading pleasure but more so, the tips it contains are from his personal experience and for you to implement. I came across a beautiful blog titled “How to cure stage fright-The science behind public speaking”. https://ooomf.com/blog/how-to-cure-stage-fright-the-science-behind-public-speaking. It contains valuable tips for the experienced and the not-so experienced. Last but not the least we have another ICAB Toastmas-ter, TM Sumit Dhadda expressing interest in taking over the editor role. Let us welcome TM Sumit in his new responsibility. I will nevertheless be around con-tributing editorial assistance to facilitate the handover and also contribute written articles when required, to make ICAB VOICE shine as always. TM Mohit

An eventful close to year 2013.

From the Editor’s Desk

Dear President, I am part of ICAB but not part of BCICAI. The way you have narrated in your presidential address in the No-vember issue about the performance of our ICA-Bers in the International Conference (Global Economy @ Crossroads) was same as how Sanjaya(n) narrated the battle field situations to the blind King Thrud-harastran (here I am the Thirudharastran) in Maha-baratham. In overall the presidential address was en-couraging, motivational and inspiring one. Congratu-lations! By TM Somaskandan

CTM George Thomas displays the Novem-

ber 2013 issue of ICAB VOICE

TM Sanjay Gupta presents the November 2013

issue of ICAB VOICE to CTM George Thomas

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Welcome to the icab family

Name: N.K.Rama Sharma

Working with: International Motor Trading Agency W.L.L.

Why did I join TMI ?: To improve communication skills

Name: Akhila Madduri

Working with: HSBC

Why did I join TMI ?: To improve speaking and listening skills

Name: Kannan Sundar Rajan

Working with: Khalid Almoayyed & Sons WLL

Why did I join TMI ?: To be part of a professional group that provides a wide opportunity for exchange of knowledge and get updated on ones selected field.

Dear Mohit, What a lovely piece of literature this was. To start Gopal and yourself amazingly captured some of the life changing moments of ours. Ankur’s work life balance mantra was just too good and I was really surprised by the way Uday had worded his article, Just too fantastic…I am searching for my common sense now in all direc-tions;) Subash once again proved that he’s just physically away in Qatar but mentally, emotionally and literarily still with ICAB…Last but not the least Karthik’s article just floored me. What an amazing read it was. I am sure majority of ICAB members ( males of course) could immediately equate our own karmic positions to Karthik. All and all it was a real visual treat. I thoroughly enjoyed it. Thanks again for coming up with an amazing stuff. Cheers Amit

Dear Mohit

I completely agree with TM Amit. The cover page itself has come out so well that, I could not escape from read-ing the entire Voice. Since we were all there at the intl conference, we have witnessed the amazing presenta-tion by the members of our ICAB Toastmasters Club. The Presidential address and editorial articles are written very nicely. Of course the other articles by TM Ankur, TM Subhash and TM Kartik are worth reading.

Thank you for inserting few quotes here and there which are really good. Overall it is a fantastic issue and good efforts from your end. Regards, Uday

……………………...on the November 2013 Newsletter

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Awardees in regular meetings

11th December Meeting No. 210

23rd December (Joint) Meeting No. 211

DTM Aspirant—TM Sivakumar

Best Evaluator – TM Shaukat L.

Best Table Topic speaker– Dr Babu Ramachandran

Best Speaker– TM Amit Shenoy

Best Table Topic speaker– TM Raunaq Desai

Best Evaluator– TM Raunaq Desai

Best Speaker– TM Jaishankar

Best Table Topic speaker– TM Dilip Jain

Best Evaluator – TM Karthik G.

30th December Meeting No. 212

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A Life’s lesson from a mentor

I consider him, Mr. K I Viswanathan, Vice President – Marketing, ITC PSPD, as one of my men-

tors for the simple lesson that he taught me during my induction in ITC. It was 1998. I had

just joined ITC Bhadrachalam Paper Boards Limited (Later merged into ITC and became ITC

PSPD). As a part of my induction, I completed the factory visit and was waiting for completing

the Marketing side. It was a Saturday (being half day, I was expecting to leave early). I en-

tered his cabin around 12:30 pm. He looked at me and asked me to meet him at 3:00 pm. I

came back at 3:00 pm to meet him. Before I could ask him any questions, his first question

was “How was your visit to the factory?”. I answered him in a casual voice it was good.

“Good”….what do you mean by good….You should say “Excellent”.

He continued “What have you learnt from your factory visit? How many ques-tions do you have from your visit ? How many questions do you want to ask me out of your factory visit?” I was taken aback, wondering whether I should ask him anything. Probably he understood my state and changed the subject. He asked “What is your opinion about Sachin Tendulkar”. I jumped from my seat and with so much enthusiasm spoke for about 15 minutes. He quietly asked me “Why was this enthusiasm missing when you visited the factory or when you came to my room to ask questions? In life you need to show enthusiasm in any-thing you do, despite the fact that something else is more interesting to you and other things are not. Be like a child which has the curiosity in anything that

it looks at. This is very critical for you to grow in your life”. That day I left his room around 7:00 pm, carrying so much of information about the organization thrown at me, intermittently, while giving me loads of life lessons. I will never forget this day in my life as this day paved the way for my enthusiasm which today I at least attempt to show in each and everything I do. I consider him to be one of my mentors because in my opinion, “Mentors are those who contribute something to

you which shapes you up but without expecting anything from you”. I am sure he did that to me.

By TM Meenakshi Sundaram, ACS, ALB

Enthusiasm is the yeast that makes your hopes shine to the stars. Enthusiasm is the sparkle in your eyes,

the swing in your gait. The grip of your hand, the irresistible surge of will and energy to execute your

ideas.

Henry Ford

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VINDICATION

The decision to relocate back to India, especially from the GCC, posed several challenges. This article shares my experience on the challenge of marketing oneself to the target employer. 60 Second CV - The first few minutes of the discussion sets the tone, interest levels and attractiveness to the employer - It is in these few minutes a judgment is made as to the suitability to the position. Here’s where I made ‘full use’ of my Toastmasters experience by delivering a 60 second prepared speech - a 'Selfie'. In fewer than 100 words articulate what I bring to the table and also address their suitability concern. Now that the Selfie had conditioned the employer to believe that talking to me was not a waste of time, I now had the opportunity to share my experiences as well as allay concerns. This is where 'know your audience' from Toastmasters came into use. I was able to discuss my profile and link it to what the employer was looking for. As in Toastmasters, no meeting is complete without Table Topics - Be it the general softies on strengths, why do you want to relocate back, leadership styles or the hardies on things which I had less clue on viz. Taxes, Laws etc. - all were handled with aplomb. Think on your feet, take your time, speak with confidence, a bit of humour, a bit of personal experience, reinforce and conclude - sounds familiar? My mentor, DTM Muralidhar, always insisted that the conclusion is the most important part of the speech – leave them by reinforcing and getting the message across clearly. And this is what I remembered to do – sell the profile again, allay the fears and express interest. Looking back, I had more than over-shadowed my deficiencies by being able to articulate very well my profile. I am more than convinced this is what put me on top of the shopping list. All three skills – listening, speaking & leadership that were developed in Toastmasters came to full use. The deci-sion to join ICAB and sincerely invest in the Toastmasters programme is vindicated.

TM TOM VARGHESE POTHEN

By TM Anil Bhatta, ACB, ALB

CC COMPLETION

You can change your world by changing your words... Remember, death and life are in the power of the tongue. Joel Osteen

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How to get the best out of ToastMasters

By TM Dilip Jain ACG, ALB

1. Maintain a catalogue of learning’s from each meeting in a file, indexed properly. This would be a very useful re-source as one goes forward in the toastmasters journey and refer back where improvements are required and where one has done well. 2. Use podium effectively. 3. Do not leave the lectern empty, do a proper handover to the next role player- the logic in it is that you are the one at the centre and leaving it empty will allow any unauthorised person to lead the podium and the meeting. 4. Cue cards- This is very effective way to present speeches as one goes ahead in life while presenting speeches to different audience. Cue cards are small cards, the size of visiting cards with main points written. This helps to main-tain the speech flow and avoid embarrassment when anything important is forgotten. Using cue cards is a quality of a seasoned speaker. 5. Introduction: Introducing a person in high gusto encourages the speaker and also makes the audience curious to listen to him. It is a good practice to ask the speaker as how he would like to be introduced. 6. Create awareness about the content of Toastmasters International Website. A club having its own website also has a large reach and attracts people. 7. Ensure each meeting is rated based on some criteria selected; also a feedback form can be circulated among members for what they would like to see in the meeting. 8. Attend other clubs meeting. Each club has some speciality and variety in the way it conducts its meeting. Lots of learning happens in this manner. 9. Conduct joint meeting with other club. This brings in new synergy, new ideas and openness to share. 10. Swap venues with other clubs. This will enable you to come out of your comfort zone. 11. Discuss, chat with mentors regularly. Strong, interactive mentor-mentee relationship brings about a sea change in the speakers performance. 12. Know the toastmasters hierarchy. What happens in the x-com, area, division, district and international levels? This will give members picture of the bigger TMI. 13. Attend area and division contests. Some of the best speakers participate here and there is a lot to learn. 14. Ask members to attend all club contests. Continuous practice, grooming members can bring out the star hidden in many of them. 15. Do participate in contests once in awhile. It helps one to understand your position against the benchmarks. 16. Listen, view TMI podcasts. It contains valuable inputs. 17. If the club has a library, put it on the website with the books available. Let members take the benefit of it. 18. To prepare a speech normal process is to prepare and then deliver. Sometimes follow the reverse path. Give a speech and then start writing. It helps to structure thoughts in the way one really thinks and becomes easy task for speaker to prepare. THE END

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ICAB VOICE ARTICLE CONTRIBUTORS

Article contributors in the first half of this term

VARIOUS December meeting highlights

Present Club Mentor BVS Prathap facilitates Sponsor Mentor CTM George Thomas.

President TM Gopal hands over TMI Award to VP Membership TM Sridhar for inducting five members during Au-

gust-September 2013.

Serial

No

Member Name Number of Articles contrib-

uted in 6 months (July 13-Dec

13)

1 TM Karthik G.

4

2 TM Uday Shanbhag 3

3 TM Subash Gupta 3

4 TM Amit Shenoy 2

5 TM Dilip Jain 2

6 TM Raunaq Desai

1

7 TM Kurian Thomas 1

8 TM Debashish Banerjea 1

9 TM Sridhar Seethapathy 1

10 TM Vinod Anand 1

11 TM Kannan Iyer 1

12 TM Ankur Lalaji 1

13 TM Somaskandan 1

14 TM Anil Bhatta 1

15 TM Meenakshi Sundaram 1

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How many of you have raised your voice against injustice? How many of you protest to protect? How many of you are willing to win over your fear to protest? Anna Hazare is not afraid of hunger and brutality. When Mahatma Gandi was thrown out of the train in S.A., he decided to raise his voice for the Indians. He was not afraid of hunger and the lathi charge by the British. In my opinion, Anna Hazare is not in Mumbai or Delhi, nor has Mahatma Gandi passed away. They are here within you! Within me!! How and Why? Year 1987, former film star and Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu MGR died. Who will become the next Chief Minister? There was a big fight in the TN legislative assembly. The Central Govt. dissolves the state legislative assembly and implements President’s rule in the State. There was also a Teachers strike throughout the state which was going on for almost 45 days. One day we, around 7/8 college students, were sitting and chatting in our town public library. Eventually our talk turned towards the ongoing teachers strike. Some of us argued in favour and some of us argued against the strike. Reasons: because of the long strike students were not able to prepare for their quarterly examinations, teachers getting good salary etc…. I was in the second faction that means I was strongly against the teachers strike. We took a decision to go for a rally against teachers strike. Immediately we decided to print bit notices announcing the date, time and from where to where the rally was going to take place and also requesting public support to the rally. Each one of us contributed 50 to100 rupees per head and got the notices printed and distributed among the public in that area. Every day we travelled 7/8 kilometers on bicycles in all the four directions for canvassing and gathering public support for our rally. The school where we studied is lo-cated near National Highway- so we distributed notices in the Public Transport buses also . Three days before the rally, we were relaxing in a coffee shop after that day’s canvassing. Suddenly 4-5 cars came and stopped in front of the coffee shop. Some local politicians and their team of ‘hit men’ got down from those cars and came towards us. They requested us to withdraw the rally since they wanted the teachers’ community vote in the forthcoming elections. We explained to them: Look, we are not politicians and we are far away from politics. What we are worried is about the children’s education. We strongly refused their request. Afterwards, they started threatening us - if you go ahead with the rally you will suffer the consequences. We told them, go and do whatever is possible. We don’t care and we will not stop. After this incident out of 5 of us who were in the coffee shop, 2 did not show up from next day, obviously too scared. Next day we went to the local Police station to get police permission to conduct the rally. We got police permission and came out from the police station. At the same time, a group of people, sent by the politicians, en-tered into the police station and sought police permission to conduct a rally on the same day, same time and at the same place in support of the teachers strike; fortunately, the police was in support of our rally and did not give the other group permission to conduct their rally on the same day. Meanwhile, we were facing lot of pressure from the politicians, teachers’ union and even our own parents. Our par-ents were concerned that we might be attacked while the teachers’ union threatened us that our future would be impacted if we continued the rally. At 11 pm the night before the rally, we approached our neighboring village robinhood- Rama Raghupathy M.A., M.Ed. He said a single line ‘You guys assemble tomorrow and leave the rest to me’. With some courage, we assembled the next day at 2 PM at the starting point. But we were not together since we were afraid that we might be attacked. All of a sudden, Rama Raghupathy entered the scene, in a tractor with 200 supporters. With around 400 people to start with, we 3 students led the rally. Within half an hour, there were around 2000 people behind us since the notices had reached far away towns and places. We were chanting slogans against the teachers in the rally.

Protest to protect your democracy in

India

By TM Somaskandan, CC

P.T.O.

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There were 14 policemen overseeing the rally to avoid any untoward incidents. I cannot explain how I felt that eve-ning leading those 2000 people. The rally was extremely successful; our parents were proud of us and we were the 3 musketeers in our town. I’m not saying that you should gather rallies and question every incident in the country. But you can start raising your voice for any injustice happening around you, whether it is social or political. Do not keep quiet in such situa-tions. We don’t have to always wait for one Anna Hazare to start a revolution. We don’t need a Gandhi to always

lead us for everything.

There is a Gandhi in all of us. There is a Anna Hazare in all of you. Why, there is a Somaskandan

inside each and every one of you. If you see anything going wrong, protest to protect yourself and

your society. New stories of corruptions are revealed almost every day and sometimes I keep

wondering where our country is heading to!!! We must wake up now before it is too late….what

we need is not only one Anna Hazare….but several Anna Hazare-s to represent the sufferers, the

suppressed and the ignored and help them reach their voice into the deaf ears of the rulers and the judiciary.

Birthday wishes to our members for a

happy and successful year ahead

14th December-Charles Samuel Itty

04th January-Manu Thomas

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About ICAB Toastmasters Club ICAB Toastmasters Club is a chartered club under Toastmasters International, focusing on predomi-nantly training Indian Chartered Accountants im-prove their public speaking and leadership skills through education and mutual support. The club normally meets at 7:15 PM on every 2nd and 4th Wednesday of a Month at Mercure Grand Hotel, Seef. For further information about ICAB Toast-m a s t e r s C l u b p l e a s e v i s i t h t t p : / /icab.toastmastersclubs.org.

About Toastmasters International Toastmasters International is a nonprofit educa-tional organization that teaches public speaking and leadership skills through a worldwide network of clubs. Founded in October 1924, the organization currently has more than 292,000 members in 14,350 clubs in 122 countries. Each week, Toast-masters helps more than a quarter million people of every ethnicity, education and profession build their competence in communication so they can

gain the confidence to lead others. For information about local Toastmasters clubs, please visit www.toastmasters.org.

Contact us

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8th January 2014 : Meeting No. 213

22nd January 2014: Meeting No. 214

For article

submissions:

For joining the club:

VP Membership– TM S.Sridhar +973 39624908

charles@gmi-net.com mohit.malkani@gmail.com

ICABERS

11th December Meeting No. 210-Theme “Bitcoin”

23d December Meeting No. 211-Theme “Christmas Eve”

30th December Meeting No. 212-Theme “New Year Resolutions”