Written by Vinay Sindhe
The details of the meeting on Nov 1 are as follows:
After promising Amith of joining the meeting some weeks ago, this was my 1st meeting with the SHG members (glad that I made it :-)). It was scheduled on the 1st of November @ 10 in the morning. Keeping up my word I reached the Cubbon park @ around 9 30 and found no one but elderly women discussing house old chores.
I was roaming around, hearing the chirping of birds and thought of calling up Amith @ 300 seconds to 10:00. He told he’ll be late by 15 min and gave me Mr. Sudheendran’s number. Upon calling up, Sudheendran told he’ll arrive in 5 min. Rightly so, I saw him and we greeted each other and he introduced me to Subhash. Subhash guided me to the hut and v found some couple to our disappointment :-(.
Meanwhile Sudheendran brought along Sharan Kumar to join us. Actually I, Sudheendran and Sharan knew each other as we had met in Prabhakaran’s clinic. Amith joined us and Pavan and Shanmu followed. Courtesy to Amith’s heroics, we shooed away the people in the hut and occupied our seats.
We began greeting each other and started discussing about the techniques which we follow. I decided to stick to prolongation and slow speed (was not possible to a great extent though) while Sudheendran was acing @ his “Bouncing technique”. By this time we were joined by Karthick and one more Pavan.
Ms Deepika of The Hindu fame was scheduled to meet us at around 11:15 for a casual interview session and made her presence around the same time. She noted down all our names, the techniques which we follow to overcome stammering, the cause of stammering and all. She promised to publish the article at the earliest. Sharan made an important point of having to spread the message in the rural areas wherein the media and the sort of urban help are questionable.
Deepika left after taking a few Kodak moments. Then we exchanged our action plans for the rest of the week and left the place. Personally I was damn satisfied :-).
