(Following is the transcript of my speech delivered at Toastmasters Club Contest.)
Good Evening Ladies and Gentlemen!!!!
I am very excited today…! I am excited, because tonight, tonight I am going to ask a question! Oh… oh I am sorry, in my excitement I forgot an important thing… Here…
(I produce a fat envelop and go to someone on first bench and hand it over to him)
I need someone responsible to keep this for me till the end of my speech… You… I think I can trust you. You won’t run away with it, will you? There are a million dollars in it…
Yes, a million dollars, Mr. Contest chair, Fellow Toastmasters, and guests, … I am betting a million dollars here, that I am going to ask a question, actually I am going to ask a lot of questions tonight, but one of them is the million dollar question and he who gives me an answer will take it all away.
You know what, I don’t ask questions often. I don’t do it because the last time I asked a question I got thrown out of school. It was when I was 10. My father received a letter which read, “Your son is being thrown out of school because he asks unnecessary questions.”
My father asked, “What did you ask?” I said, “Why is water wet?”
Few years later my wife picked up a letter from mail which read, “Mr. Shahaney is being fired from his job because he asks unnecessary questions!”
My wife screamed, “What did you ask?”
I asked my boss, “Who made you the boss?” She gave me a cold stare.
These are weird times. Someone asked a mundane thing like, “Kitne aadmi the?” and he became a legend and I, I lost my job my school.”
It was not the last time someone punished me for asking a question. Once I asked my wife, “Can we have something different for dinner?” Now I am the cook of the house.
Ladies and gentleman, in our world you can only ask certain kind of questions. Every time I return home late from office, my wife asks, “Where were you?” I want to object but never can. That’s a perfectly valid question.
I remember when I was a teen and my dad spotted me with my girlfriend, he asked, “Kab se chal rahi hai ye awaragardi?” “Since when this rowdiness going on??” I looked at my mom and she silently signaled, “Valid. Please reply”
In fact he and all the people around me kept asking me questions after questions, “Why did you fail” “When will you pass?” “What will you become?” “When will you marry?” “Why you are not having children?” The enquiry questions never stopped and I couldn’t do anything to stop it either. They all seemed to belong to the list of allowed questions.
Only mine didn’t… Once my father took me to a temple and told me to pray to the idol, so I asked, “Why do you call this clay idol a god?” He slapped me!
I could never figure out what is the difference in my questions and their questions. I thought my questions were more valid than their. They were definitely more valid than “Holi Kab hai… kab hai holi?”
But my questions don’t seem to resonate well with the world like the Gabbar’s questions do. There must be a reason. Someone has done something to this world, some voodoo stuff.
Gone are the days when you asked, “Why does an apple fall on the ground?” , “why does kettle lid jump when water is boiling.”
Those seemingly stupid questions led to discoveries of Gravity and Steam Engines. The questioner became Sir Newton and Sir James watt. We all know of the man who changed history after asking, “Why can’t I travel in the first class compartment with fair skinned people?”
You become what you become by the quality of questions you ask.
But these as I said, are weird times. Now people tell you what to ask.
David Ogilvy, the father of modern advertising said, “Don’t ask why, ask why not?”
I ask why? Why do I ask Why not if I want to ask why?
The famous John F Kennedy said, “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country!” For god’s sake tell me if I want to know what my country, my government, does for me… why should I ask something else.
I suspect that it was a clever politician’s way of avoiding accountability.
I don’t understand, who gave them the right to tell people what they should ask.
Can I do this to my wife? Every time when she asks where were you… I can’t tell her, “Don’t ask where were you… ask what you can do for ME your country?”
But they have managed to do this. They have created a world, which does not ask many questions.
That brings me to the question I was to ask you tonight for those million dollars. Ladies and gentlemen, I ask you… for a million dollars… When was the last time you asked a question, which made a difference?
This silence tells it all.
Let me take this packet from you and give it to my wife. She asks at least one question which is impossible to answer. Every time we are going out for Dinner, she asks, “Honey how am I looking?”
The envelop question…
I will leave you to answer that question, Mr. Contest chair.