Skeletales

Today Merwyn D’Cruz, my brother, celebrates his golden birthday. 

Among his several talents, he is also blessed with storytelling skills. Whenever our cousins get together, we remember how as kids he kept us amused with his stories about Skeletor. We were held spellbound with his voice modulation and we suspected that he made up the characters as the story progressed.

After all these years, Merwyn agreed to pen down a Skeledon story for our reading pleasure. It will be presented here as a series and this post will be updated regularly as we go along...

 I

Skeledon has ninety-nine bones in his body. He needs one bone to complete the structure and magically become a very powerful human. 

Whenever he sees a dog eating a bone, he goes crazy and orders its arrest, but the dog is never caught and so Skeledon remains a very odd arrangement of bones. 

Skeletee, the wife of Skeledon, is obsessed with looking pretty. She is in search of a good parlour and a beautician who can make her face the prettiest in this world.

Skeletoo, a two-year-old boy, and Skelethree, a three-year-old girl, are their children. 

Skull is the name of their dog.

This family lives in a very strange place called The Coffin. 

Skeledon holds a crooked stick in his hand. It has a skull on the upper side where he keeps his hand. When he gets angry, the skull glows red, and his dog, Skull, starts making strange noises. 

Skeletee sits with a beautician for three days and three nights to get ready for a party.  The parlour has empty shelves and the wastebasket is full of used things. The beautician has used up all resources in the shop to satisfy Skeletee and somehow make her look beautiful – Beautifool! Finally, she is ready. 

Skeledon is eager to meet his ‘Beautifool’ wife. A long golden wig, pounds of creams and pastes, hundreds of pins and nets, marbles, cotton balls, toothpicks, ear buds, waste tissue paper, glue, beads, thread, and other things have made her look completely different. 

A hundred years ago, Skeledon and his family were humans. 

They were foodies and liked junk food. One night, when the sun, the moon, the earth, and the stars formed a straight line, they went on a food adventure. 

They started with a Rumble Jumble Roasted Egg followed by Wild boar meat in thick purple curry and Pinacolada icecream with crispy dried ants topping to complete the meal. The result was very strange. All of them felt like a fully loaded washing machine dancing on the floor. 

Skeledon immediately consulted their doctor who advised x-rays for further diagnosis. But a shooting star and the flash of the x-ray machine coincided and the outcome was terrible. The doctor could not believe what he saw and was dumbstruck. 

Something complicated the x-ray process and four skeletons emerged out of thick smoke with their clothes on! 

Walking-talking skeletons with no flesh. 

After a long examination, the doctor advised them to wait for a hundred years when the sun, moon, earth, and stars would form the same straight line and a shooting star would strike. They needed to take another x-ray to get their skins back. 

Till then, they had to keep all their bones intact. Even the loss of a single bone would affect the reversal process. 

(To be continued...)

A Toast to the Toastmasters

Finding a Thursday evening free in our family calendar in Muscat is a rarity. Since Friday and Saturday are weekending days, there are always events happening around town on Thursdays. 

My friend, Hamsa, is a natural motivator and cheerleader. She claims her confidence greatly improved after joining the SAB Toastmasters Club. I had never been to a Toastmasters Meeting and wanted to know more. 

When Hamsa sent me the invitation to join her as a guest on 17^th January for a Toastmasters Meeting, I looked forward to going as the rest of the family had other plans. 

On the way to the meeting, Hamsa told me a story that changed my perception of random encounters in life. I realised how effectively she could bring the story to life with her words while navigating her way through the Al Khuwair traffic on a dark weekend evening. 

The session started on time with a Call to Order by TM Monica immediately followed by a warm Welcome Address by DTM Mohammed Salar. The Toastmaster of the Day, TM Mohammed Balla, then introduced the Theme of the Day - Ancient Greece.  He introduced  each of the speakers by assigning them names from Greek Mythology according to the roles they played that evening and the personality traits he had observed during his interactions with them. By the end of the evening, he had presented a dazzling array of gods and goddesses - from Kronos, the God of Time, to Aphrodite, the Goddess of Love. 

The Time Keeper, TM Sarmadas gave a two-minute explanation of how he would be counting the minutes. TM Sara, the Word Master/Grammarian, introduced the Word of the Day, ‘Relinquish’, and explained its meaning. The intention was to use this word as many times as possible that evening. So every time anyone used the word, they were applauded with thumbs-up signs from the audience. And two thumbs-ups from Hamsa.

TM Tushar who manned the Ah Counter explained his role of keeping track of the ‘ah, uh, um’ fillers in speeches and also the repetition of words and phrases. 

In the second part the session, Project Speeches, TM Shaji was given seven minutes to give a speech on his topic ‘The Picture’. He effectively brought to life his domestic duties of taking his baby daughter to the park. He showed a picture of an elephant and asked the audience if they could identify it. Some members in the audience rightly guessed that it was Appu – the mascot of the 1982 Asian Games. TM Shaji displayed his other drawings and talked about his interest in sketching pictures in his spare time and not only doing engineering drawing at work. 

TM Monica’s topic ‘Problems or Opportunities’ began with her dramatic body language to tell the story about God’s servant who couldn’t keep silent in the face of injustice and thus ruined God’s plan. She exuded remarkable confidence in conveying her ideas.

DTM Mohammed Salar’s speech on ‘Distraction’ captured attention with an opening question about a small town in USA. He succeeded in making an appeal to the audience to stay away from using their phones while driving by giving graphic examples. 

Between these three Project Speeches, MTM Kalpana, TM Hamsavardhini, and TM Pranali gave some information about Evaluation Criteria. 

Voting slips for the best speaker were passed around and the Time Keeper gave the timing of each speech. 

In the third section, TM Vineeta presented three Table Topics which inspired impromptu speakers to speak on topics such as – ‘All is fair in love and war’. This was the section where non-members and guests could also participate.  Hamsa looked at me expectantly but at that moment my mind was blank and I couldn’t think of a thing to say about any of the three topics. The ones who did speak, however, did such a wonderful job that it was hard to believe that their speeches were not prepared in advance. Now I know what Hamsa meant by saying how her confidence in speech has grown considerably after joining this club. 

Next, the three speakers from the Project Speeches were briefly evaluated by TM Hamsavardhini, TM Pranali, and TM Kalpana. They effectively gave constructive criticism and provided areas for improvement with a great deal of encouragement. 

Again voting slips for the Best Evaluator were passed around. They also had a three-minute time limit. 

In the Reports section, TM Sara gave a count of the exact number of times the Word of the Day – ‘Relinquish’ was used. The Ah Counter in-charge,TM Tushar, accurately reported on the repetition of phrases, words, and fillers. TM Sarmadas reported on how the speakers managed their time. MTM Lakshmi gave a General Evaluator’s Report and covered all the sections of the evening session beginning from the very first minute the session started. 

The Toastmasters then got down to serious business with MTM Kalpana’s brief talk on Business Planning. 

During the Awards and Closing ceremony, DTM Sabiha joined DTM Mohammed Salar in handing out the certificates and trophies. In his closing remarks, DTM Mohammed Salar thanked guests in attendance and talked about the achievements of the SAB Toastmasters Club. The January 2019 edition of their newsletter, SAB Vision, was then released. 

The Toastmasters International, which has clubs all over the world, provides an "experience in which members are empowered to develop communication and leadership skills resulting in greater self-confidence and personal growth.”

Photo courtesy: SAB Toastmasters Club, Muscat, Oman