CC - 8 Get Comfortable with Visual Aids : A Husband in a Kitchen

Visual Aids required:
Coffee powder box, sugar box, many coffee filters, saucepan, gas lighter, dabara tumbler, spoons


Introduction:
How many of you like to drink filter coffee? How many of you know to prepare filter coffee? Good!
TMOD, Toast Masters and guests very good morning!


Body:
This is a real life story of a husband who prepares filter coffee for his sick wife.


Husband: It is 5:30 in the morning and she had twisted her ankle last night. The doctor had asked her to take rest for a day but I never knew if that would lead to me having an adventurous morning with my coffee. There are robots and computers which can print results of complicated programs in few seconds, but there is no device on earth which will tell us whether there is a probability of getting coffee from wife or not this morning.


Oh it is 6 now. She is still sleeping.


Wife: I am not able to get up from the bed can you prepare coffee today?


Husband:
 "Sure!"


Coffee jar:
I have had opportunities to drink filter coffee and even to watch people prepare it but I have never had an opportunity to prepare it by myself. Now where will I find the filter coffee powder in this kitchen? Nonsense! She has kept the box well underneath the dhal box so that our neighbour Pankajam will not cast her evil eyes on our fully filled jar of coffee powder. They have two cars and are they covering them up? This lady makes no sense in her actions.


Filters:
Many people have different hobbies like stamp collection, coin collection, but  my wife has this hobby of collecting the coffee filters. Look!! The house is full of filters. At least 15 of them. How will I know which upper part fits which lower part. This is turning out to be clumsy. Ok this one fits.


Spoon:
I am not dumb not to know that a coffee powder goes into the upper part of the filter. Let me add 2 spoons of powder approximately. Oh no there is no spoon. Let me take the one in the turmeric powder jar. I will wash it well to avoid further cross questionings from higher management. Oh my bad! I put the wet spoon inside the coffee powder. She will not kill me for that. Still I am scared.


Wife: Are you still preparing? Shall I come?


Husband: NoNo...Almost done...


Milk Curdling:
She adds sugar on top for some unknown reason at least unknown to me. Let me also do that. Now I have poured the hot water and pressed the upper filter on top of the lower one. Now the milk is boiling. Oh no! why are there extraordinary bubbles rising from the middle. God pardon me for all my mistakes. I washed the saucepan so well that it cannot curdle. Oh the liquid part is separated from the solid. If she comes to know of this then there will be a battle in the morning. Now I need to dispose this. Let me put it in the garden. Wait if I put it there then she will ask me why I am opening the back door now. Okay then let me put this stuff in the kitchen sink and pour lots of water so that she will not find out. This is much worse than covering up a murder.


Wife: What are you doing? I am coming.


Husband: No No. I am coming. It is ready.


Filter Stuck:
Oh what happened to this filter? Have I attached the wrong pair? Why is it not coming out?hmmm finally...


Finally this time the milk is not curdling. Wow the decoction has also come down. Mix milk, sugar and decoction in the dabara and now it is ready.


Now let me take it to the bed room hoping that my wife will like it. It is more like giving my answer paper to the teacher and the teacher correcting the paper right in front of me.


Wife:
"Thoooo What have you done? Will a human being drink this? Look does it even look like coffee? Did you press or not?


Husband:
Press? Press what?


Wife: My head. Just for the sake of preparing you put every thing together and didn't even bother to press the powder right?


Husband: I had not shown so much of interest even during my board exams but how can you say that I did it for the sake of doing?


Wife: Even if I die there is nobody to give me one sip of coffee.


Husband: After death nobody gives coffee. They only give rice.


Husband: Hey  I pressed the filter so well that it did not come out easily.


Wife: You must not press the filter you must press the powder with the stirrer otherwise this is how the coffee will be. Don't you know how to prepare just a filter coffee. [Prepares coffee by herself] Here this is how a filter coffee should look and taste like.


Husband: He Heee.... Only if the right person prepares, it comes out well


Wife: This is a chauvinistic statement. It is instilled in you people that women are born to prepare coffee and it is not a man's job.


Huband: Very True...[slowly]But in coffee shops men only prepare coffee....Phew...Thank god she didn't hear that.

Note: This is a real life incident of the famous writer Sujatha.

Toastmasters Club Contest Speech - Pain!!!

Note:
The term 'Treasurer' mentioned in this speech refers to my husband who was performing the role of treasurer in our club at that time.


Introduction

Have you ever experienced your pain threshold? When you are experiencing pain in your body to an extent that you cannot see and hear the things happening around you it means that you have reached your pain threshold.

Contest master, toastmasters and guests Good morning!

Body

It was the summer of 2009. Ten days after my marriage, I decided to get rid of my wisdom tooth which had no space to grow and was creating a lot of pain. The doctor said, 'Come prepared to bare a lot of pain. It is going to be a surgery and you must take rest for at least 3 days.' The next day there were two doctors - a junior and a senior. With my mouth wide open, the senior injected 5 needles around my gums and my mouth became senseless. The senior said to the junior, 'Now watch carefully!! I am going to cut open the lower gums. There will be a lot of blood loss you have to keep pressing the cotton balls into the patient's mouth as the blood oozes out." Don't allow it to flow out. That was the most scary thing I have ever heard. I was in the verge of telling, 'Doctor I will give you the money for those 5 injection. Please let me go home.' But still I sat there with my mouth wide open. I could hear the scissors cutting my gums which brought a chill in my spine. They dumped my mouth with cotton balls. Finally he put an instrument which resembled a cutting player. He gave a weird expression  biting his teeth so hard that it looked as though he was uprooting a big tree. Suddenly there was a big jerk and he took out the instrument with a small white shapeless thing. The senior looked at the junior with pride, having exhibited his skills acquired over the years. Then he quickly started to stitch my gums. His hand movements resembled a cobbler's. Although I could see and hear all that was going around I could not feel the slightest pain as there was under local anesthesia. I was prepared to leave and was thankful that the process was so painless. Little did I know that the episode was yet to start. I happily went home, had my tablets and slept by 8 PM. AT 10:30 my throat was slightly dry. I woke up to have water. The next 60 hours was HISTORY. There was an immense pain on the sutures. Not able to bear my pain I started shouting loudly that woke our treasurer in the middle of his sleep. I was rolling on the floor out of pain, shouting loudly and behaved crazily. Remember, just 10 days after marriage. Our treasurer would have wondered, 'Is this girl like this always or only when there is a tooth ache, How am I going to manage with her through out my life.' Then he was trying to convince me that I will be alright but I could not even hear him. Tears rolled out. Pain was driving me crazy. It took 3 days for me to come back to normal.
I thought that was my pain threshold and for the first time in life I experienced it.

Then in 2011 I found myself in a bed with 20 surgeons surrounding me to perform C-section. A large needle called 'epidural' was inserted deep into my spinal cord. Even before the anesthesia started working I could feel the knife slitting my tummy. I experienced the ultimate pain and shouted out loud. They realized that the anesthesia didn't work so as an emergency measure they put me to unconscious state with general anesthesia. The next 6 months continued with painful and sleepless nights with my baby. I was quite sure that, that moment was my pain threshold. Life has more challenges by the way.

In 2013 my daughter was 2 years old. She was playing with a huge teddy bear when she lost her balance and fell straight upon the window sill. There was a sharp nail that was protruding. It tore her eye brow deeply and blood was oozing out of her head. She started yelling out of pain. For one second the whole world became hallucinatory to me. I wanted to disappear from there and appear in a different world. With no time to spare, immediately we took her to the doctor and he arranged a few surgeons to stitch her wound. I was sitting on a chair with the little one on my lap holding her head and hands. My husband had to hold her legs. The surgeon was piercing a needle into her soft skin near her eyes. It went into her flesh and reached the other side of the eyebrow. The process was repeated again and again until the needle reached the end of the wound.

Conclusion

My own physical pain was bearable but this was the first time my heart shattered into pieces and realised the real pain is the pain in the heart when your dear ones suffer. Over these years,  I understood that, every time I was reaching my threshold, I was becoming more powerful to face bigger challenges.