Goa SHG Kicks Off !

“Co-ordinating a SHG is like a marathon, and not a 100 meter dash” – were the words of Dr. Sachin, when I revealed to him my desire of co-ordinating a SHG in Goa. And his words stood vindicated, and were the driving force for me to make the first Goa SHG happen.

As the scheduled day – 8th November was approaching, it was approaching with all odds against me. I co-ordinated with 3 of my friends out of which 2 had willingly accepted to attend the meeting. One day prior that is on 7th November, one of my friends called and told me, that he couldn’t make it for the meet. So, finally it was only two of us – Me and Stanley. Also, from nowhere, it started raining and the roads were jammed due to the ONGC I-league football matches.

Taking a tip from Manpreet’s Jammu SHG, and Dr. Sachin’s advice, that even starting with 2 is a success, we decided that we both should kick off the meeting.

Amid the drizzles and traffic jams, we finally kicked off the meeting. Stanley, is a businessman, and is running a Printing Press in Margao. I had known him when I met him during the Partha Bagchi workshop in Margao, years ago.

I had already told Stanley about TISA and SHGs. We started by sharing a few of our experiences in the past. Stanley told me how his stammering was very severe, when he was in Mumbai. Years ago, in late 90s, he then moved to his homeland – Goa, and he said that his speech was much better.

I also told him about my experiences and how people questioned me about my stammering during my interviews. After exchanging a few experiences, we then discussed about practice.

Stanley told me he practices one hour a day. He practices slow reading, and talking to himself by looking in the mirror. I told him I do slow breathing exercises, daily and that’s it!

Then we decided to be each other’s critic. We both gave a frank feedback on each other’s speech. Stanley said that he thinks my stammering was very mild now, as compared to what he saw years ago during the workshop. He also said that I do speak slow, but sometimes the speech gets too monotonous. He suggested I should try to make my speech interesting, by varying the speeds as and how required.

I then gave Stanley feedback about his speech. I told him that he speaks too fast, and breathes very shallow while speaking. I suggested that he should breathe before staring to speak, and having enough air in the lungs is like a fuel to our speech.

The good thing about this exercise was that, we both took the criticism sportingly, and were looking to learn from it.

Just before parting, we sat over a cup of coffee in a near by restaurant. During this, we decided that we will next meet a fortnight later. Stanley also insisted that I should do reading practice. We then decided that in the next meeting, we will carry some reading material for doing slow reading practice.