Last day at Herbertpur

Keith gave a “Anthony Robbins hug” to Marian. They sat in the garden and exchanged notes. Mrs Jain gave us breakfast a little later in her beautiful house. Then, we drove off to Dehradun and had a brief meeting with Cyril ji. Both Cyril and Keith were unanimous that donor need a lot of “education”!! It is nice to hear someone say loud and clear what has been your gut feeling for a long time..
Then, some last minute marketing for relatives back home; Finally, we were just in time to meet Mr Brijnath and Mr B C Joshi at Doon library. It was a brief but intense interaction with two academics, tecahers and sensitive human beings: we have asked them to help us find a PWS (or anyone with time and interest) to help us start a self help group in Dehradun for people who stammer.
An “Anthony Robbins hug” and we parted as Shatabdi inched out of Dehradun. Nitin will be receiving Keith in Delhi and sending him onwards to IG Airport in Delhi very kindly.
Keith’s visit gave us another occasion to emphasise that stammering does matter to us (why else would this Englishman come from UK and give talk after talk in four cities in India, almost non-stop for two weeks?)..
His visit also gave us a chance to meet many of us, who had been just an email ID or a screen name for one another. It also gave a fledgling “organisation” a chance to coordinate, network, synchronise complex events across cities, weekdays and weekends, regions- all through volunteers. We learned to deal with media too. We learned to trust each other, support each other. We learned to get out of our ‘SHG mode’ and talk to the big world outside. There are many more miles to go, before one could rest, I guess- but let us acknowledge that collectively we, the TISA, have achieved something worthwhile, something we could be proud of.
Thanks to all of you, in TISA family and Keith.