Manish’s story – delhi workshop biography challenge

Hi, I am Manish Aggarwal, a resident of Delhi, engineer of qualification and a PWS by nature. I love reading novels, playing CS and travelling a lot.

I have been suffering from stammering since when I was 8 years old. I was always good with computers, from the age of 13 years. When others were learning how to use a computer, I was already repairing the computers in my Uncle’s shop. I used to work in his shop just for fun in my childhood and since it was an STD/PCO booth too, and too many customers came there, so I had to talk to a lot of people daily. But many times, I stammered and they used to laugh at me or sometimes even mock me for my voice that why am I sitting at the shop reception when I couldn’t even tell them how much money they have to pay for using the PCO. Slowly, it ruined my inner confidence and I started becoming an introvert. I started to avoid talking to strangers and even my relatives so that I don’t stammer in front of them. I just hide in my room and avoid most of them.

And one of the biggest problem was talking on the phone, Oh God, how to even put in into words that how insulting was it when I couldn’t even say “Namaste” while answering phone and a lot of times, I just cut the call and then call again and told them that there was some network problem and avoided to say Namaste also.

I was good at studies in my school but was bullied by people till class 9th. Some students use to hide my bag and other belongings to irritate me and sometimes even mock me by imitating my stammer. My teachers were helpful but they also couldn’t help me much of the time cause the bullies were not afraid of any teacher. But in class 10th, once I was so damn frustrated that I beat the shit out of one student who was bullying me for a long time. And after that, nobody ever bullied me. Even some other students came and talked to me, who never even bother to say “Hi” to me. I started feeling good.

Then in class 11th, I chose Science and there in my class, I made a lot of good friends who were really helpful, never mocked me. We used to chill, bunk classes, play most of the time in the playground. Life was going well.

But in spite of all the fun, I many times used to feel lonely cause when other students were participating in quizzes, clubs, becoming prefect and head boy, there was I, doing nothing. I just used to study. I never participated in any event. I always wanted to become prefect and then the head boy but was never selected. This made me felt very sad. I used to think, I will never be able to overcome my stammering and maybe had to live my life like this, “A loser” for the whole of my life.

All the experiences with stammer made a different belief system in me and I became in introvert. Later, I got into a engineering college. When I came to college, things got even worse, I tried to hide my stammer and for that, I never talked to anyone. I just used to sit in classes and after classes, run back to my home, never attended any fest or any club/society meeting in the first year. I had problems while answering attendance roll call and whenever I had to speak something in class, everyone was so quiet, it was pin drop silence. It looked as if they were showing sympathy to me and that was also very bad.

I wanted someone who also feels same like me,  but I couldn’t find any in my circle of friends or relatives. Then, after coming to Tisa in the first year, I got some confidence that there are people who share the mutual feeling as mine. I thought that I am not alone here. I started attending the meetings but after 3-4 meetings, I stopped it. Initially due to extra work pressure during exams and later, due to my laziness. I know that to improve the quality of life and to become a better person and develop a great personality, I’ll have to overcome my stammer and hence after a long time, I am coming to Workshop to kickstart my journey again from “Stammering to Fluency”.

Thanks for reading my story.