Last Tuesday afternoon, as I was clearing a backlog of WhatsApp messages, one caught my eye. Lieutenant Colonel Priti Tiwari had invited me to address 400 adolescent girls attending a ten-day National Cadet Corps (NCC) camp in Wardha.
The girls, aged between 13 and 19, had come from all over Vidarbha—Wardha, Nagpur, Chandrapur, Gondia, Bhandara and Yavatmal. Some studied in government schools in small towns and villages; others came from well-known institutions such as Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan and St. Joseph’s School in Nagpur. For ten days they would live together at the Bapurao Deshmukh Engineering College hostel, barely five hundred metres from my home, following the rigorous routine that defines every NCC camp: dawn parades, physical training, meditation, lectures and drills, all designed to instil discipline, teamwork and selfless service.
There was another reason the invitation touched me.
Only a few weeks earlier, Priti’s mother, Mamta Tiwari, had spent her final days in our palliative care ward at Kasturba Hospital. During those difficult days, we had spoken often. When Priti wrote, she did not suggest a topic or lay down any expectations.
“Sir, please speak on whatever you think is appropriate.”
At first, the freedom sounded liberating. Within minutes, I realised it was anything but.
Whenever organisers assign a topic, they also define its boundaries. The speaker knows where to begin, what to leave out and how to conclude. A blank canvas offers no such comfort. Should I speak about health? Careers? Mental well-being? Social media? Artificial intelligence? Every possibility seemed equally attractive, and equally inadequate.
My first instinct was predictable. After four decades of practising medicine, I naturally gravitated towards subjects I knew well—healthy eating, exercise, sleep, addictions and lifestyle diseases. Teenagers, I thought, should hear more about these.
Before committing myself, I sought the opinion of Rupali Gajbhiye, one of our senior residents, who had recently completed her MD in Medicine.
She listened patiently before smiling.
“Sir, please don’t.”
The answer surprised me.
“Everyone tells teenagers how to stay healthy. They have heard it all before. Speak to them about careers. That is what they are worrying about.”
Her comment stopped me in my tracks. She was probably right.
Still, I wanted another opinion—this time from someone much closer to the audience I would be addressing.
That evening I called my thirteen-year-old granddaughter, Diti.
Unlike adults, children rarely soften their opinions to spare your feelings.
“Dada,” she said without hesitation, “talk about careers.”
Then came advice that was far more valuable.
“But don’t lecture them.”
I laughed.
“Why not?”
“Because they’ll stop listening.”
She paused for a moment before adding, “Tell them stories. If your stories are good, they’ll remember them. If you keep giving advice, they’ll forget everything by tomorrow.”
That conversation lasted barely five minutes. It probably saved my entire talk.
The next decision was language.
English would come naturally to me, but it would also create an unnecessary distance between me and many girls from rural schools. Marathi would exclude those from other linguistic backgrounds. Hindi seemed the obvious choice—simple, conversational and familiar to everyone in the hall.
I also decided against using PowerPoint slides.
Perhaps age has made me old-fashioned, but I have increasingly begun to distrust presentations crowded with bullet points and animated graphics. A good story, told well, has held audiences spellbound for thousands of years. I decided to rely on that timeless technology instead.
Over the next few days, I filled several sheets of paper with handwritten notes. I discarded almost as much as I wrote. Gradually, the talk took shape around the lives of five remarkable Indian women—Kalpana Chawla, Kiran Bedi, Ela Bhatt, Smriti Mandhana and Sudha Murty. They came from different worlds, chose different careers and overcame different obstacles, but together they told a larger story: that courage rarely announces itself with fanfare. More often, it begins with one difficult decision, taken quietly and against the current.
Whether that story would resonate with four hundred teenage girls was something I would discover only on the evening of the talk.
Yesterday evening, I reached the college a few minutes before six.
Outside, the rain had stopped only a short while earlier. The trees still glistened, puddles reflected the fading evening light, and the wet earth released that unmistakable fragrance which every Indian associates with the first showers of the monsoon. But in Vidarbha, the rain often brings little relief. The clouds drift away, leaving behind an evening that clings to your skin.
The auditorium was an old, non-air-conditioned building, now filled with four hundred NCC cadets seated cross-legged in perfectly straight rows. Their immaculate uniforms and ramrod posture spoke of days of parade practice and discipline. The hall was remarkably quiet, but the air was thick and still. Within minutes I could feel beads of sweat forming on my forehead and trickling down my back. It had nothing to do with stage fright. After four decades of speaking to audiences, that had long ceased to trouble me. It was simply one of those sultry July evenings in Vidarbha when the weather makes everyone perspire, whether they are standing at a podium or sitting silently in the audience.
The Audience
As I looked across the hall, I wondered what they were thinking.
Some had travelled from villages where opportunities are scarce. Others came from schools in Nagpur and nearby towns where life is very different. Yet, at that moment, all distinctions had disappeared. They were simply four hundred young women on the threshold of adulthood, each carrying her own dreams, doubts and uncertainties.
A few hours earlier, Sonu Meshram, one of our Hospital Information System attendants, had helped me locate Chhotu Bhujade, a young videographer who lives in Adarsh Nagar, barely two kilometres from my home. For a modest fee, he records lectures and public events.
Chhotu had promised to reach the auditorium by 5.30 p.m. to set up his camera. Like many promises involving Indian traffic, this one ran a little behind schedule. By the time he arrived, I was beginning to glance nervously at my watch. It took another ten minutes of trial and error—adjusting the tripod, checking the microphone, testing the audio, and making sure the camera framed both the podium and the audience. Finally, Chhotu looked up, smiled, and gave me a reassuring thumbs-up. Everything was ready.
An NCC cadet walked to the podium, introduced me in two crisp sentences, and stepped aside.
It was time to begin.
I walked to the microphone.
For a moment, the hall was completely silent.
I did not begin by talking about careers.
Instead, I looked around the hall and said, “Watching all of you this evening takes me back more than fifty years, to 1973, when I entered Government Medical College, Nagpur, as a first-year MBBS student. I, too, was an NCC cadet.”
A ripple of smiles ran through the audience.
“I still remember how proud I felt every time I put on the uniform. The beret sat firmly on my head, my shoes shone brightly after a careful polish, and as I marched with the other cadets, I imagined my chest had expanded by several inches—although, in truth, I was so thin that the uniform probably looked bigger than I did.”
That drew a gentle laugh.
“But medical college has a way of taking over your life. Before I realised it, my days were consumed by anatomy dissections, biochemistry practicals, physiology experiments and endless lectures. One by one, the extracurricular activities disappeared from my timetable, and my brief career as an NCC cadet quietly came to an end.”
Only then did I turn to the subject of careers and begin telling them the stories of five remarkable Indian women whose lives had taken very different paths. looked up.
Then I told them about Kalpana Chawla, a little girl from Karnal who spent her evenings looking at the stars and wondering what lay beyond them.
From there we moved to Kiran Bedi, who refused to accept that policing was only a man’s profession; to Ela Bhatt, who organised women working in the informal sector long before the world began speaking about financial inclusion; to Smriti Mandhana, whose cricket bat carried her from neighbourhood grounds to the international arena; and finally to Sudha Murty, whose generosity has transformed thousands of lives.
I was not trying to narrate five biographies.
I wanted each story to answer a single question: What makes an ordinary person extraordinary?
As I spoke, I kept searching the audience for clues.
Teenagers rarely provide them.
Unlike medical students, who nod politely even when they disagree, adolescents wear expressions that are almost impossible to read. By six in the evening these girls had already spent an entire day marching, exercising and attending classes. Some looked tired. A few leaned against their neighbours. One or two struggled to suppress a yawn.
For a speaker, that can be deeply unsettling.
Was I losing them?
Every few minutes I would stop and ask, “Can anyone tell me who I am describing?”
Almost instantly, a hand would rise.
“Kalpana Chawla.”
“Kiran Bedi.”
“Sudha Murty.”
Each correct answer reassured me that appearances can be deceptive. The faces looked quiet, but the minds were alert.
Looking back, I realise that I enjoyed telling the stories more than I enjoyed making the points that followed them. Stories invite listeners to think for themselves. Advice, however well intentioned, often asks them to think the way we do.
Diti had understood that instinctively.
She had been right.
The session ended a little after 6.40.
There was no dramatic applause, no standing ovation, no crowd gathering around the podium. The girls filed out as quietly and as efficiently as they had walked in. A few smiled as they passed. One or two came up to thank me. Lieutenant Colonel Priti Tiwari walked over with a warm smile and said the cadets had enjoyed the session.
I thanked her, picked up my phone and began the short drive home.
The Journey Home
It takes barely three minutes to cover the distance between the engineering college and our house, but I spent most of that walk replaying the evening in my mind.
Every speaker knows this ritual.
You remember the joke that did not quite land. The story that could have been told better. The sentence you forgot to say. The one you wish you had never uttered.
I was no different.
Had I tried to pack too much into forty minutes? Would the girls remember the stories a week from now? More importantly, would they remember the ideas behind those stories?
By the time I reached home, I had my answer.
The stories would probably survive.
The advice might not.
That thought stayed with me long after dinner.
The Lesson
When I began speaking in medical conferences four decades ago, I believed that a good lecture should be comprehensive. Every important point deserved a mention. Every argument needed supporting evidence. Every slide had to earn its place.
Experience has slowly taught me otherwise.
The purpose of a talk is not to empty the speaker’s mind. It is to leave something worthwhile in the listener’s.
The two are very different.
Looking back, I realise I had fallen into a trap familiar to writers and speakers alike. We become attached to our favourite stories, our cleverest observations and our best slides. We persuade ourselves that each one is indispensable.
Very few are.
Writers have a wonderful expression for this discipline: kill your darlings. Be willing to delete the paragraph you love if it does not serve the larger story.
Speakers need the same courage.
Nobody has ever walked out of a hall wishing that a speech had lasted longer. The opposite happens far more often.
If I am invited to address a similar audience again, I shall make one important change. I will aim to finish in twenty minutes, not forty. Not because I have less to say, but because I have learnt that what the audience carries home matters far more than everything I leave unsaid.
As teachers, doctors and speakers, we often judge ourselves by the number of ideas we manage to deliver. Our listeners judge us differently. They remember a story that touched them, an image that stayed with them, or a single sentence that quietly changed the way they looked at the world.
Perhaps the best speeches are remembered not for everything they say, but for the one idea that quietly stays with the listener on the journey home.