my public speech :)

Hi All,

After few months gap , I am back on blogspot :)

Recently I have joined a club called "Club Communique".

The very first day , our mentor asked us a topic on which we would not be able to speak at all. She said, "You will have to come on the stage and speak on any topic except the one you are going to submit now". So everybody was very honest while disclosing a topic, so as I. Topic which I don't like,no other than "HISTORY". Now everybody was so relaxed with the hope that at least we are not going to speak on the topic which we hate most. But nobody was aware what game our mentor is going to play with us. After getting a topic from everybody, she looked at us , smiled wickedly and announced that you will have to speak on the topic which you have submitted to me :) .. everyone of us was so shocked and feared of a speech now. I remember a saying in Marathi "Aliya bhogasi asave sadar" ( means be ready for bad time always ).


I prepared my speech. My first speech on HISTORY was as follows-

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Hello everybody,

Today I am going to talk on HISTORY, the subject I used to hate most in my school days. But over a period of time I realized that history plays a very important role in our life.

First of all, what does History mean to you? Very simple definition is "Set of events which had happened in the past". However, few of our leaders defined history little differently. According to Napoleon Bonaparte, "History is a set of lies agreed upon". Similarly, as per Konrad Adenauer, "History is the sum total of things that could have been avoided".

But for me, "History is an ability to look back". Just imagine if our leaders could not look back at World War-II. How would they understand what should not be done in case of conflicts.

We can learn and improve by studying events occurred with our ancestor. But have you ever thought that these historical events might not have been written fairly, impartially.

Let me ask you a question related to Mahabharata. How many of you know the real name of Duryodhan? "He is actually named as Suyodhan which means a great warrior, he changed his name to Duryodhan which means impossible to conquer, many people have misconception that he is been called as duryodhan because of his misdeeds". This reminds me of a very good quote , "History is written by the victors". I guess, had the Kauravas, won the war, we would have had read a very different version
of Mahabharata. I strongly believe that history is just a view of particular events. If two people are writing something about a same event, they may end up describing it completely differently. Let me give you an example, if two people, one from New York and one from Iraq, are writing on US-Iraq war, they will picture a completely different story about the war, and depending on which author you decide to read, you
will have different opinions about the same even.

History is not only regional, it can be personal too. We could learn loads of things from our ancestors. How did they handle things thrown at them? Since they could face those, we also should be able to. What went wrong? What could have been avoided? Etc.

Couple of days back I was having discussion about this speech with my team-mates. My team-lead made a very brilliant statement that "History can not be complete without MASALA".

Just imagine, if our history books contains events with its date. For example, "Shivaji Maharaj won battle of Pratapgad against Afzal khan on 30-Nov-1659".
Will such a history book excite students to read it? That's the main reason history is been written with very interesting stories.

In summary, History is very important in our lives.

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