Bangalore SHG Report: 15th May 2016

15th
May 2016 has to be one of the most feared day in recent times. The reason
being, I was to co-ordinate a SHG meeting. The fear wasn’t because, I was
bogged down by the responsibility of Co – ordinating an SHG meet (as a matter
of fact, I love co-ordinating meetings), but rather by what had happened
exactly a month ago.

The
incident had a scar not only on my body (and my bike) but even on my mind. I
was late while leaving for the last meeting (which might had been one of the
reasons for the accident) and that was running on my mind when I was getting
ready for this one last week. Amidst the fear of not getting into another one I
left my house a little earlier this time. When I finally reached there (safely)
at 10:05 am, Mansi had already arrived and was going through her 4th
speech texts.

People
joined in slowly and steadly. The order being Shobhit, Pratibha, Subrat,  Naman, Harekrishna, Pramod, Abhinav,
Amarnath, Ravi, and Muhammed (two of them from Sudan). Thanks to TCK 10k
Marathon, that almost no one found a clear route to get inside Cubbon park (our
meeting abode).

Shobhit
and Pratibha kick started the meeting with their 4th speech.  This was followed by Naman’s sharing of ‘How
to set goals and achieve them’ and Mansi’s 4th speech.

                                                                                                             Then
came the introduction Round. We introduce ourselves every time we come to an
SHG. This is the bare minimum and the regular members have crossed the barriers
where this  doesn’t seem like a challenge.
So, this called for a change. Being bored from introducing ourselves in each
and every meeting I had planned an introduction round where we weren’t supposed
to introduce ourselves but rather someone else. The idea worked and most of us
found it difficult to give an introduction for someone else. The thought
underlying the exercise wasn’t just meant for a change, but had other
underlying agendas too. It reflected the listening skills that the person
possessed (when he interacted with that other person and got to know as much as
he could) and at the same time showed how good you are at talking about something
that you weren’t aware of 30 sec ago (or say something that you don’t believe
in). Aren’t we faced with similar predicaments when we have to convey impromptu
messages (that we were never aware of) in real life situations? We as
stutterers are so much obsessed with planning our thoughts and arranging the
sentences in our mind (before we speak) that such situations often turn out as
disasters. Why not practice for such disasters and thus mitigate it to a
hazard?

                                                                                                                     This
was followed by impromptu speeches which was co-ordinated by Abhinav. The theme
for those speeches was ‘Love’ and everyone tried their level best to spread
love in the air (as he had thought while setting such theme). Some failed, some
tried and some survived (like Pramod and Ravi).

                                                                                                                      The
meeting concluded with video making for National conference. Out of sheer
innovativeness and the best of street smart brainstorming, we finalised the
script, rehearsals, locations for shoot and the shooting itslef in 20-25 min.
All thanks to Pramod, Naman and Abhinav who never fail to take a lead. I
believe attendees of NC 2016 are going to have a real blast seeing the
Bangalore video for NC.

On
my way to the SHG meet this week, for those 25 min (on my bike) I was a little
scared that I might get into another accident, but then I had a thought that,
who isn’t. We all are. Aren’t we? About something or the other? Every bad
experiences scar us for our whole life, but it is upon us to not let those
scars define the course of our life. That is what I did, I didn’t let that bad
experience of meeting an accident stop me to drive my bike and neither should
anyone. We all get the learnings out of our bad experiences and I got mine too
i.e to drive with caution.

The
idea behind sharing my accident story was, to let the learnings guide your way
and not the bad experiences themselves. In short, if you failed at an exam, you
shouldn’t stop taking exams but rather take cue from the failure and work
harder to take the exams again. Isn’t everything in life be correlated with
this? The call is yours! To take the exams again or rub those scars for rest of
your life.

This is all from my side.

Mohit Jaiswal 

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