Lower D’sala outshines in inter-TCV elocution contest
Friday, 15 September 2006, 11 a.m.
Chauntra: According to Dale Carnegie, the famous author of Quick and Easy Way to Effective Public Speaking, a good (extempore) talk may be likened to what Rosseau said love letters should be written: you began not knowing from where to start, and concluded not knowing what you have said.
But the oratorical skills so lavishly exhibited at the Tibetan Children’s Village school here at the elocution contest of the 11th Inter-TCV Schools Literary Competition, had a whole new ball game, which underlines, know where to began, how to end and, above all, know what you are talking about.
As the contest unrolled yesterday afternoon, about 24 students, some as young as a fourth-grader, without the benefit of microphone, delivered at the highest pitch of their voice, a whole new edition of world’s famous speeches, in a jumbled mix of British/American accents, tinged with an icing of “Ting-lish” (or Tibetan English).
The speeches of Nelson Mandela and Indian President Abdul Kalam, to Queen Elizabeth II and Princess Diana, to Hilary Clinton and Ngawang Sandrol, reverberated to a thundering applause, as a giant portrait of “the three daughters”, or rather, “the three mothers of Tibet”–the Gyalyum Chenmo, Tsering Dolma Takla and Ama Jetsun Pema–compassionately surveyed from one corner of the school auditorium.
Out of the eight TCV schools, based in Dharamshala, Ladakh, Chauntra, Gopalpur, Bylakuppe, Suja and Selakui, the Lower Dharamshala won the contest, which featured speech elocution, poetry recitation and dramatic enactment.
Among the panel of judges were Thubten Samphel, secretary of the Department of Information and International Relations of the Central Tibetan Administration, and the vice-president of the Tibetan Youth Congress, Lobsang Yeshi.
After two hours of an action-packed, highly entertaining contest, your reporter, who was also one of the three judges, came home with the thought that if the eloquence of their speeches could match the eloquence of their action, then the future of Tibet is in good hands.
(www.tibet.net is the official website of the Central Tibetan Administration of His Holiness the Dalai Lama.)