It was during a talk I was giving, when halfway through, I saw the eyes of the whole audience move to the side of the hall. I looked and saw two priests in their white cassocks walking across. Immediately the organizers, followed by a retinue of other office bearers got up. They welcomed the two priests, took them to their seats at the front of the hall, just below where I was speaking and seated them there. All this standing and welcoming and even exchanging pleasantries while I was striving to hold my audience.
I looked at the people, their eyes were fixed on the tamasha that was unfolding. I plowed on and slowly the audience turned their attention back to what I was saying. I knew I had lost them for a whole two minutes while the charade had taken place, not behind, but right there in front of the hall.
The organizers then sat back and looked up at me with smiles on their faces; they had completed a task, now they waited for me to complete mine, so they could get on with the next: I pushed on, knowing as a speaker I had lost the moment, and most probably the evening.
You have seen such too I am sure; organizers so busy organizing their event, they fail to notice that they are disrupting the meaningfulness of the program. Sometimes it’s readers so interested in a missing comma or full stop that they’ve stopped listening to the message!
For them, the talk or the message is not important: It is to them, a mention in their AGM report that a meeting was conducted, attended by a few hundreds.
I have seen a chairman beckoning the peon when another is speaking and telling the peon to switch off the lights! Or a priest telling the choir to sing softer or louder during prayer time.
Hey man, that’s the time you are spending with God, or aren’t you?
For them, prayer is not an act of communicating with their God, but a time when they can see that everything is shipshape.
Not for them the meaning or content of an event, but just the holding of it for their record books.
I tried to put more force into my speaking that evening, even used some drama and a joke to get the people’s attention back, but from their looks as they turned back to me, I knew the organiser had won:
He had stolen the moment and must have been busy jotting down in his report, ‘The program was a huge success!’
It wasn’t!
So often we forget content while looking after form..!

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