From my third speech at ToastMasters
Coming from a tropical land, I didn’t really have any reason
to celebrate summer. It reminds me of heat, sweat and power cuts and other than
the occasional thunderstorms, it is a dreaded season in my memory. Also, I am
not a person who can sit quietly or peacefully for a long time. Must be because
of my over active brain, I always need to DO something. So my summers were
never idyllic as such. In fact they were the only time when I could get a lot
of things done. I was busy!
I see a summer holiday is a big thing here, no school for
months, outdoor activities and all. We were not so lucky. After our finals were
done in late March we had no school for around two months, including summer
vacation, but we had loads of homework to do and regular study sessions.
Sometimes we’d travel with families but they were never adventurous and very
little exciting. However, I found things to amuse myself. My main attraction
was my laboratory at home. It was a broken wooden bench on our open terrace
where I had my beakers (empty jam bottles) full of muddy water which I
filtered. I mixed water color and saw the sun rays gleaming through them with
the airs of a professional chemist. I also measured rainfall in a glass jar.
You might think that my teachers and elders should be really proud of my
scientific attempts, but sadly that wasn’t really the case. Anything outside of
school books were considered a waste of time, so even though I learned science,
this was technically my play time.
After a few years, my experiments changed in form. I started
getting interested in physics, especially the night sky and optics. As my
knowledge of science increased, my experiments started succeeding as well. I
bought a science encyclopedia with gift money and delved into the projects section
of it. Funny enough, the book was printed in the US, so even though the
materials they suggested I use are easily available here, getting them in India
was next to impossible. Would you believe I couldn’t get a box of tissue
papers, aluminum foil or play dough back home? But I found my work around. Many
of my experiments failed but like everything else in life, the ones which
succeed after so much effort put into them are the ones that stay etched in our
memories. The optics light overlapping experiments never came out well, my
water wheel splashed water everywhere and the paper wheel got soggy but my
pin-hole camera was perfect, I could separate sodium and chlorine by
electrolysis table salt. The smell of chlorine is not nice, but it really made
me happy that day as I copper coated a paper clip. My most successful
experiment was a sun dial. I worked round the unavailability of cardboard but I
got stuck at the need of a compass. How would I know the exact north without a
compass? I had to align my sun dial on the north-south line to mark the shadow
cast every hour. Mind it, this was a time before Internet was widely available,
so all I could do was brainstorm. Then like the ancient sailors, I turned to
the night sky to guide me. I went up to the terrace at night with a bit of
chalk and a ruler and found the big dipper shining brightly. Well, if there’s
the dipper, I joined the first two stars in the scoop and traced down. Oh no!
There is a huge hospital blocking most of the north sky. Well, ok I still know
where Polaris is. I put a mark on the ground and drew a straight line pointing
north-south. Next morning before the sun rose, I went to align my sun dial and
mark the hours on it. And then the best thing in science happened – if you
follow the right steps, you are bound to get the right results!
So you can see even with the discomfort of heat and
humidity, summers were really quite nice. In my university days in the south,
summers gave me the time to spend time with my friends and I really started
cherishing this sunny season after moving to Seattle. I don’t have summer
breaks any more, but I still get to do simple things that are very new in my
life, like camping in Mt. Rainier or tending to my little kitchen and herb
garden. This season has given me the chance to find myself. It’s not really a
horrible season after all.
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