The real prize

Five years back, that was my first encounter with a ‘Toastmasters’ event.
Mrs. Shayla Koya is an Indian who supervises the Toastmasters Club in an Indian school. The Toastmasters competition is well-known and traditional in building young people's skills of delivering speeches. It is considered as one of the most important means of personality building in young ages, teaching eloquence and articulation, the ability to choose topics, culture, influencing the audience with sound, movement, and sense of humor, and elegance of language. Such speakers are known as “Toastmasters.”
In the celebration of the final competition, she chose me to be the keynote speaker. I delivered my speech in (pre-determined) five minutes, and I had to finish it sharply and say everything. I felt as being set to exam, where someone raised a little board to remind me of the time and how much time is left for me. It has been the first time in my life to finish a speech in five minutes!
I was exposed to severe mental pressure, and hundreds of amazing speakers in eloquent English, as they listen to every letter, verb, comma, and whatever the books of grammar of this language say. This mental pressure is incomparable to the emotional pressure I have experienced when I was listening to those young speakers over hours, as they improvise a topic for five minutes in front of hundreds of people without showing any confusion or embarrassment. I saw a girl who is certainly not more than thirteen years old (who won the first prize) of whom I've never seen an equal in eloquence, subtle irony, allusive bitter comments, fluency, and shining presence in any grown-up speaker in our area. Amazing!
The young children, boys and girls, passed in front of us, trying to amaze us as spectators, and catch the referees' admiration. Each referee has his own duty. One is responsible for the soundness of the language, another for the art of speech delivery, a third for appearance and movements, and another for thoughts and eloquence.
It was like a tape that lasted for hours, and passed in front of us like the lightening of winter, lightening carried by a cloud full of rain.
One day after the celebration, I received a very eloquent letter from Mrs. Shayla, of which I quote: "I would seriously like to convince the people around me in the bad need to make the young realize the importance of their way in this life, which is also their religion, and quit believing that religion is not an island that is isolated from the rhythm of their daily life. We should teach them to realize and be aware of the logic and beauty of their religion, through oratory. I want my students, and the girls in particular, to believe that they are active and productive. I am proud of my “Deen” — religion, because my Deen is complete and grants me all the freedom that I will need in this world, and because it is the duty of each Muslim to communicate the message of Islam."
I asked the little girl who unanimously won the prize: “What are you going to do with the prize?” She replied in her own bright way without thinking: "Oh, I will do nothing with this prize, the shelf can carry it. But the real prize is the abilities that will make me able to convince others in my religion.” Then she stopped speaking and raised to us from behind her Hijab her bright eyes full of intelligence, and finished: “This is the real prize”!