Second day at Vikasnagar

24th feb 2010: In the morning today, we went to Assan lake- chatted, had a little breakfast and then reached Aurobindo Ghosh Inter College in Dak Patthar; Principal had kindly given us one hour to address the teachers: teachers can set up enduring patterns and values in the child, especially in a child who is a “little different”. Since it was a Hindi medium school and message so important- Keith spoke and sachin interpreted after every 1-2 sentences. There were about 30 teachers, along with the young enthusiastic principal. We discussed what all teachers could do at no extra cost in terms of time or money; how they could help a CWS get ready for the adult life etc.

Later, after lunch, we went to Dakpatthar degree college. It is also a teachers training institution. We addressed a group of teachers and students. Many questions came form a Biology lecturer: what is the “biology” behind stammering? We discussed briefly- failing mechanism of timing cue, Dopamine, medial and lateral pathways etc etc. Another question was: was stammering a source of ‘significant’ suffering? We shared random cases where some young individuals were driven even to suicide. But of course there are many ‘lesser’, yet all the same troublesome problems caused by stammering. A child at present does not have a language to express his suffering- and therefore a lot remains unsaid. Certainly not ‘respectable’ ‘accessible’ language to share his speech difficulties.

Later, we did some marketing. Mr Jain, a TISA patron, showed us how tea is processed, packed in his shop in Vikasnagar. The shop had a nice aroma of tea leaves! He presented some quality green leaves to Keith. I guess, Keith will be using it to have a ‘British’ high tea on a lazy afternoon, one of these days, on return? right Keith? Anyway, he deserves a lot of lazing around and high teas after having worked with TISA non-stop and extremely hard for two weeks, as only PWS are capable of.