Great Minds, Great Thoughts – Goa SHG Meeting, 31st January 2010

It so happens many a times that you don’t realize how time passes by. Suddenly, you realize that you have spent a lot of time, and spent it constructively, learning, creating new things or new ideas… and still enjoyed. Today we had a same feeling when we walked out of Nehru Park, after our SHG meeting.

Today we had a first timer – Santosh. But, at the same time, Rahul was missing. So, it was Me, Prakash and Santosh starting the proceedings today.

Santosh started, by giving a detailed introduction about him. He talked about himself, his family, his home town (Mumbai), his native village, about his job and his journey which led him where he is today.

After Santosh’s introduction, Prakash told us about his conversation with Dr. Sachin, a couple of days ago. He said that Sachin Sir told him about practicing bouncing technique, and advised to try speaking bouncing technique during the meetings. This was it… We decided that today we would practice talking with Bouncing Technique.

This technique was something new for Santosh. Prakash and I demonstrated Santosh the bouncing technique. And then we got started. First we spoke a sentence each by bouncing. Then, we talked about one incident from our lives, using the bouncing technique.

Prakash then suggested that we have the interview round (which we had tried in our last meeting) again, but this time with bouncing. Hence, we got started with the practice of two people among us, interviewing the third one. This practice was very helpful, where each one of us, spoke with the bouncing technique. Sometimes we forgot, got carried away and got started with our old ways. But that’s how we learn!

Prakash was the last one to be interviewed. Like a true sport, he asked for a feedback about his speech after he was done. We both advised him as per what we had observed about Prakash’s speech.

Santosh, then explained us how he handles his client calls in his office. Like a true mentor he explained it with an analogy. His analogy – If you are travelling on your bike on the highway, with a rather brisk speed of 70 or 80 kms per hour, and you notice a speed breaker well ahead, you will start preparing for it. You would shift to lower gears, stop accelerating, push on the breaks, and then smoothly pass over the speed breaker. But now, if you notice this speed breaker all of a sudden, then you will do all this, but this time it’s your reflex action that will do it for you. You will suddenly push both the breaks, shift gears all in a very less time, till that time, you would have passed over the speed breaker, but not without a rather shocking jerk! Similarly, he said, he handles his client calls by deliberately stopping his speech when he is anticipating stammering. He just stops, and exhales our some air, and starts all over again with the speech. With that he is able to manage his stammering well. Rather then his earlier approach, when he tried to struggle through the block just as it was coming. His message – “When you anticipate a block, just stop and start again”.

Finally, Prakash shared with us another thing that Sachin Sir had advised. In SHG meetings, it’s very important to have fun, and laugh! So we all shared a couple of jokes or two. Prakash then told us the story of the movie that he watched last – “2010 – The end of the world”, and I shared the story of “3 idiots”.

While going out of the park, we discussed about Swapnil Asnodkar, and saw his interview video again, and discussed about the same.

Not realizing that 3 hours had zoomed by, we bade farewell to each other and left the place with a smile and cheer on our face.

Photo: Left to Right – Harish, Santosh and Prakash