Rapporteur’s Report,
The 15th of
February, 2014, had the privelage of hosting the 399th session of
the Smart Club at the premises of Hotel Yak and Yeti in the hall of the World
Bank. After the coordinator Ms. Praveena Shrestha briefly introduced the smart
club and “welcomed back” after the Valentine’s Day we proceeded to the
introduction round. After asking the permission from the Overall Critical
Analyst (OCA) Mr. Saurav Bhatta she gave us a brief insight on the list of
role-takers for the session. This was followed by the introduction round, which
our coordinator appealed to be made as short as possible. As our time keeper
for the day reported, this took 8 minutes and 26 seconds. After this we had the
National Anthem which had occupied 50 seconds.
The coordinator then
introduced the Pre Decided Speaker (PDS) Ms. Sahara Bhetual to express herself
on the topic “Existential Crisis: Absurdity or Realism?” She took over from the
coordinator to explain that Existential Crisis meant questioning the meaning
and the purpose of life. She followed this explanation of her topic with a line
of a philosopher who said that we visited the earth and left it, contrary to
the more popular belief that we live and die.
In the 4 minutes and 45 seconds she took she repeteadly mentioned that
life has a purpose and it is our job to find what it is. She made Mark Twain
speak for her as she borrowed his saying that the two most important day of
life is your birthday and the one on which you found the purpose of life. She
concluded by advising us to make our own destiny and to add colors to our
existence. This was followed by a Question Answer round in which many genuine
and tricky questions were asked but our speaker handled them extremely well the
bottom-line of most answers were to enjoy life.
Next on the series was
our Self Decided Speaker (SDS) Master Manish Khatiwada. He had an interesting
topic Veganism: Is it true? (not Vegetarian.) After greeting everyone a Post
Valentine’s Day he asked the OCA to extend a minute of his time for the speech
which was duly granted. He started with the story of a man who owned a Animal
Rearing Farm and when paralyzed due to an accident realized the cruelty of his
deed and spent the remainder of his life as animal right activist. He described
veganism as not using any animal product like milk, silk, meat and so on. In
his 6 minutes and 27 seconds long oration he cited health, environment and
animal liberations as the major reason for veganism. He mentioned that animal
milk has been proven to degrade calcium and also asked people to see a friend
in the animal. He cited that when an apple, a lamb, and a baby were kept
together in the same room, the baby would eat the apple and play with the lamb
and not the other way round. Before proceeding to the question answer round he
repeated his appeal for everyone to be a vegan and reminded us that the
question of our food is a question of their life. In the question answer round
which he handled with great professionalism he also faced a question asking
whether the slaughter of animals was a general rule of survival for existence.
To this he gave a brilliant reply by the counter question that asked if it was
right to hamper the weaker and the helpless human beings. He finally signed off
the stage by answering an evolution related question to which he replied that
if slavery which was right 100 years ago, why would not people develop the same
thoughts about veganism.
Next was the turn for
the Impromptu Speaker Master Samrat Sigdel. He was thrown the topic of
Valentine Special among Politicians, an issue he admitted, which was quite
unexpected. In his 4 minutes and 50 seconds long humor he shared his Idea that
Politicians were too old to celebrate Valentine’s Day. De shared his experience
where politicians called it a day of no value and one of the most overrated
days. He referred to the three party politics in Nepal as a risky love tranigle
where each one was pulling the others legs’. He then mentioned that the common
thing in politics and love was a lot of talk and little work. Following on to
his question answer round, he handled the high quality of questions extremely
well. On one particular question that asked whether politicians could love or
not, he gave a high quality reply saying that they are already in love, most of
them have a family; it’s just that they do not express the way modern
youngsters do.
This was followed by
the voting round in which the audiences who had listened to all three speakers
could vote on what they felt was the best speech of the day.
Next we had PDS
commentator Master Nishan Dhungel who was called upon to comment on the first
speech. He was satisfied with the Speakers’ eye contact and Hand Movements, but
was critical that the speaker described only the first half of her topic.
Adding more to her speech and suggesting on the methods to deal more
proficiently with the topic he departed from his role.
Then we had on the
stage a charming and a smiling girl, Ms. Barsha Bhandari who was there to
comment on the SDS speaker. She was pleased with the speakers Structured Speech
and was also impressed with his humor, time coverage, stage coverage, and body
gestures but pointed out the aggressive nature of his speech and eye contact as
the fields that needed more improvement. She was also impressed with his
content part but added that he should have provided proper substitutes to
animal products to make his dialect stronger.
Next was the turn of
Master Ujwol Joshi who occupied 2 minutes and 40 seconds to comment on the
speech of the Impromptu Speaker. He was impressed by the speaker’s humor, so
much so, that he rated it as being 11 out of a possible 10. He was impressed
with the way the speaker connected love and politics but asked him to work more
on his voice modulations, stage coverage, and the habit of looking at a sheet
of a paper. With this remarks he was off.
Past is tense, but the
future is perfect; this was the line Master Prabhat Guragain used to introduce
himself as the Grammarian on a session he defined to be grammatically
satisfactory. After pointing out the mistakes of the role-takers in the four
minutes and fifty seconds that he occupied, he suggested each speaker the ways
to tackle off their mistakes. He was then followed by the Aha Counter Master
Bimal Jashwal who reported the number of Unusual Pauses that each role-taker
has made. Up next was the timekeeper Mr. Suraj Raj Pandey, who promptly
reported the time each speaker had used. Then after having a few words from the
Observer the coordinator was off her duty and left the stage for the OCA,
Master Saurav Bhatta.
The OCA described the
session as a good one and was pleased with the quiet and the calm nature of the
audience. He suggested the Club Coordination Committee to have a better
arrangement of the chairs and then followed on by asking the audience to state
their name not their address or other details in the introduction. He asked the
Speakers in general to try and engage the audience all the time and then moved
on to person specific comments where he pointed out the strengths and
weaknesses of each speakers and methods to improve. After announcing Master
Manish Khitawada as the winner of the day, he finally concluded the first
session of the day.
After the tea break
there was a Valentine’s Day special on the second session which saw lots of
poems and “Gagals” along with songs
and speeches to go by. That marked the end of yet another brilliant and
enthuastic session of the Smart Club.
By Abhash Raj Subedi
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