Who am I? Part 1-Baba ---- by Nayana Gadkari

As a person of varied interests, this particular one has been a strong ally since I was first introduced to it by my father over 35 years ago, public speaking. After numerous competitive speaking engagements in high school and through college, I ostensibly hung up my proverbial mic in pursuit of other pastures. Arrows from my nascent stint as a public speaker proved immensely valuable in my quiver as I set out on my career right up until I was thrown into a role that required further honing those skills that had served me quite well until then.

My father, or Baba as I called him, features heavily in this story, in all of them, really! He was this undeniable tour de force in my life. Tall, handsome, gregarious, and generous, inevitably commandeering every room he walked into. He spoke several languages fluently and had this insatiable appetite for books; he could quote Tolstoy with as much aplomb as he could recall entire excerpts from “Shriman Yogi” and “Swami.”  

During one of our late-night father-daughter dueling sessions, my dad told me about “The Toastmasters Club”- a public speaking club with chapters worldwide. Oh yes, my father and I dueled; we argued endlessly as we wrote my speeches. I cried, and we railed, over grammar and enunciation, whether a quote from The Bhagwat Gita or a poem from Wordsworth was more fitting. Our copies of Thesaurus and Wren & Martin were the usual casualties as they were tossed in great angst across the room – always by me.

Whether I should fling my hands in the air, whether my face should cloud in sorrow, or dip my voice in reverence or raise it in anguish. “Change the intonation, puppy!” he would thunder; “You are describing the massacre at Jallianwala Bagh, not teaching them how to bake a fucking cake. Roar like the lions and lionesses they slaughtered! Cry the torment you feel!”  He made me rehearse the speeches over and over and over again until they were award-winning and were they ever! But not before each time, I swore to never speak with him again, which lasted right up until they announced the winner, and I would go back home with my little trophy to see his eyes light up with the kind of megawatt pride only a father could have for his daughter.

Baba and I bonded over stories like parents and children often do. Some of his stories were fantastical, some were true, and some were sheer poetic license.

But I digress; now, back to the premise of this article, “Who am I?” That was the question I was asked to answer by way of an introductory speech to a Toastmasters Club. I had joined it with great trepidation, several years after my father passed away and decades after I first learned of it from him. It was also the very first time I couldn’t duel with him as I wrote my speech…alone.

To be continued… Part 2

                                   Baba, Manoj, Aai and myself on his favorite ship- The Chidambaram !