CC Manual Speech #1 - What feeds my soul?

Fellow Rhetoracles and guests! Good evening! Finally the day for my first speech has arrived – after 4 months of joining the organization and about a couple of months after joining our elite club. Believe me I had to push myself for this one – I was still thinking of making some excuse to escape from this herculean task today and push it out to some other Tuesday! But here I am and we’ll see pretty soon if I really manage to break the ice!

As the requirement of the ice breaker goes, I’ll definitely introduce myself as to who I am, where I come from and my work. But beyond that I am going to tell you a little more about my interests and what drives me each day, each moment in life!

So, I am Ketaki Kulkarni and as most of you must have guessed it I come from India. I was born and raised in Nasik – a small town in the western state of Maharashtra. I completed my engineering in Instrumentation and control in Pune – the education hub of India. After that I tried my hand at software development for a couple of years at Tata Consultancy Services in India. Soon, I decided to pursue a career in management and landed here in the US for my Masters. I graduated with MS in Engineering Management last summer and started working with Ericsson as a business analyst in Dallas, TX. In the meanwhile in January this year I got married to Anubhav who was here for our meeting in the park . Since he is based here, I too relocated and now am part of this heavenly place Seattle!

I can go on and on about academic achievements and career but I don’t need a speech for that. I can email my resume if I have to do that! I think what makes my life interesting is my hobbies and passions. At the risk of sounding too boastful, I am a person with varied interests. I enjoy reading, dancing, traveling, cooking, acting, watching movies, learning new languages and so on. But today I plan to talk about the 3 things that I feel most passionate about in the order of the time in life that I encountered these.

There is an idiom in my native language Marathi that roughly translates like this – a baby’s talents are noticeable in the cradle itself! My mom truly recognized my ‘moves’ in the cradle and enrolled me with a Kathak academy at the young age of 7. Kathak is one of the many beautiful forms of classical Indian dance. I enjoyed other forms like folk dance equally well and loved participating in every cultural show in school and college. Having formally trained in this art for about 5-6 years dance is now my best workout, my best way to unwind and relax as well as my spirituality. It’s actually a remedy to any of my problems!  I’ll consider myself a dance student for life – although there has been a long gap in my training now, I tried to keep in touch by performing at my grad school, dancing in family events and just by attending concerts! The plan is to learn some form of western dancing – ballroom or Latin American may be! Dance is and always will be the first love of my life!

While I was discovering the joy of dancing my feet also liked the idea of exploring new places and new environments as my family started this ritual of an annual vacation as soon as I completed elementary school. I enjoyed the idea of meeting different people, uncovering new geographies, new cultures, relishing variety of cuisines and learning through traveling all across India. There are some challenges in fulfilling this hobby though. Someone has said - to plan your travel lay out all your clothes and all your money and take half the clothes and twice the money! – Yes money was a limiting factor in the student phase and so this hobby had to wait until a few months back till I found a job. And although I have resumed my hobby in full swing exploring different parts of the vast US, I also realized how much the notion has changed since my childhood! No offence to anyone here but there is an unstated peer pressure to upload your travel photos on Facebook and secure more likes than your friends/colleagues. I prefer not to jump into that and capture as much as I can in my eyes and my mind more than in my camera for I really enjoy the journey.

A more recently developed passion came more out of circumstances than out of pleasant discovery! Cooking and we all have enjoyed Naser’s wonderful narration of his cooking adventures last week! Being a vegetarian, I did not have a lot of choice outside in the small mid western university town in Missouri and being a student I chose not to spend on eating out! So, we roommates decided to have cooking turns and prepare homemade Indian food. There were the typical disasters that a first time cook encounters on my way too – curdling of the curry after adding yogurt, putting in salt instead of sugar, burning the veggies or leaving it half cooked and so on! But there wasn’t much room for mistakes for we had to cook for all the roommates when it was our turn and the law of reciprocity worked here as well! In fact more! Soon I overcame the initial hurdles and started experimenting with food – seeing that my friends loved my experiments I was motivated to try more. I’ve realized cooking to be more like an art than just the mere science of making a meal. I can say that I am decent cook now and have found the way to my husband’s heart by preparing delicacies for him! Or at least he says so – well, does he really have a choice!

Jokes apart I’ve found that these hobbies have helped me enjoy life better and I’ve made new friends and acquaintances through these. Dancing, Traveling and Cooking are the three things that feed my soul. I hope this tried and tested mantra has also helped me connect with you all today.

Thank you!