LEARN TO SPEAK BEFORE MOUNTING THE DAIS

LEARN TO SPEAK BEFORE MOUNTING THE DAIS

We must learn to speak vigorously and not in a faltering, halting style with a weak voice marring the talk. For this we need a bold masculine voice, abundant self-confidence, a modicum of training in public speaking, courage of conviction, clarity of thought and structural organisation in delivery. To sum it up, we need manhood. This sort of weak pauses after every three words spoken in a weak voice render a speech effeminate and infertile and cannot for sure catch the imagination of an enlightened polity. If it moves the masses still, the polity is to be pitied for its undiscerning acceptance of whatever fodder is afforded it.

Written by Sugata Bose

Photo: Swami Vivekananda who was hailed in America in 1893 as 'an orator by divine right'. Here is the ideal of public speaking. Character, voice, musicality, tenor, content, rolling spontaneous unfaltering abundance in vigorous diction that enthralled the audience, sent them into raptures and raised them spiritually.

Curiously, Swamij had never spoken before such a large audience (7000 strong) as at the Parliament of Religions and was petrified at the prospect of having to deliver before such an august assembly at that. However, when his turn came to deliver after several requests by him to defer his speech, he bowed down to Mother Sarasvati and then spoke for a bare two minutes after the tumultuous applause of two minutes to his opening words ('Sisters and brothers of America') had died down. The audience was in raptures. As wave after wave of his melodic phrases fell upon the ears of the captivated audience, the fusion of the East and the West, of the past and the present, of reason and inspiration was sealed. It was a moment in time. At the vesper hour when the divine services were being done, the young monk who was barely thirty but 'ages in civilisation' was in the divine act of fusing civilisations, traditions and ages in a brief few minutes of inspired rendition. 

Such, my friends, is the high ideal of oratorical excellence we must strive for and not dish out insipid lectures in poor diction, poorer delivery and poorest voice.