November 2022

It was in 2012, that I discovered the best way to conducting a meeting where everyone is engaged and enjoying the session.

It was then that my whacky, science fiction, Oops the Mighty Gurgle was published. From a Malayalam-medium educated, villager kid who had never spoken a sentence in English, I had become a published author in English. Becoming a published author transforms one’s life. Suddenly people start believing you have pearls of wisdom to impart and start inviting you to talks.

Since ‘Oops the Mighty Gurgle’ got published as a children’s book, it is actually a book that appeals to the mad sense of humour in anyone, any age, I started being invited to schools and children’s book festivals to give book readings. At first, that is exactly what I did. Read the book aloud to the kids.

Luckily, a friend who attended a session gave it to me straight. “RamG, the way you are doing the reading, you are destroying the whole fun element in the book.”

Tough feedback. But one that transformed my life. I applied my creative brain and came up with an amazing plan. I invented a language called ‘Gurglese’ that is spoken by the protagonist in my book — Oops. Oops was a Gurgle, a species of evolved pumpkins.

My book reading sessions turned into crash course sessions on learning ‘Gurglese’. It helped tremendously that gurglese was spoken in a duck-voice, and full of squeals and grunts.

The children loved these sessions. Imagine a middle aged guy standing on stage and squealing and grunting and speaking utter bulls**t in a singsong duck voice. And imagine a hall full of middle school children being given the license to squeal, grunt and scream to their heart’s content with their teachers cheering them on.

The icing on the cake for the kids is when I call all the teachers on to the stage and make them repeat ‘gurglese’ after me! The kids just love the embarrassed giggles and laughter of their teachers before they gamely launch into squeals and grunts.

These sessions were so popular and engaging that I have held sessions for as many as 800 children at a time, packed like sardines into one large hall. And the only sound one could hear is my booming voice in duck voice followed by roars of laughter from the kids and their own collective duck-voice squeals.

I also used the storyline of my sci-fi book to teach the kids astrophysics. Imagine being taught what is a neutron star while you are rolling on the floor laughing! They would never forget the lessons. This experience taught me a huge lesson — make people laugh. They will forever remember you and your message.

Today, every meeting I attend, whether with children or with CEOs, I make sure that I crack some silly jokes and make people laugh. I can immediately sense the mood lighten and engagement level going zooming up. We all need to keep our inner child alive. Do you agree?

P.S. you can listen to more of my stories on YouTube at Boundless With RamG.

#Humour #BoundlessWithRamG #motivationalspeaker #happiness

In 2011, I came back from Chicago, after undergoing a clinical trial. My body was rebooted in the experimental treatment. But I also wanted to reboot my life. And the way I did it was hilarious…

I had always wanted to write. I started with short stories about dogs dying horrible deaths when I was 5. You see, I had just been bitten by a dog and I hated them (Today I love dogs, of course. They are awesome). Soon I started writing poems. I even won first prize in poetry writing in my school.

But then life became hectic — preparing for competitive exams, IIT, XLRI, a hectic career etc.

It was only at the age of 41 that I got back to writing. I was just recovering from a paralysing onset of an acute case of autoimmune neuropathy. I wanted to keep my mind distracted. So I started blogging. The genre I chose was humour. Because writing humorous posts kept me sane instead of being overwhelmed by the way my body was going to pieces.

I had to be admitted to the hospital every two months for infusions of immunoglobulin. I would sit up on the hospital bed and write my blogs. It was only when I decided to go to Chicago for 3 months to undergo the experimental treatment of stem cell transplant that I seriously started contemplating writing a book. Carried away by Harry Potter, at first I decided to write a fantasy fiction for Young Adults. But it was way too boring.

And then the infusion of chemo, rituximab and ATG started. Toxic substances that could put rat poison to shame. It took time for my battered body to recover. But once it started mending, it kept on improving. I felt on top of the world.

This is when I decided I should write a whacky, funny book. The premise of the book was so absurd and so outrageous that every page was a self-discover for me — self-discovery of just how ridiculous I could get my mind to think.

Writing ‘Oops the Mighty Gurgle’ kept my mood bubbling with humour. Thinking of absurd story plots and coming up with progressively more mad humour kept pumping dopamine in my brain. I was on a constant high.

After many rejections, the book got published. It did quite well— as far as children’s books go. But my protagonist, ‘Oops’, the evolved pumpkin from the future who had travelled back in time to save humanity from destruction, had ended up saving my life.

I always say, ‘When the going gets tough, the tough get humorous’. Would you agree?

#humour #resilience #BoundlessWithRamG #motivationalspeakers #happiness