I am Nitin Ranjan, an engineer plus MBA by education and a sales manager by profession. I work for a MNC in Gurgaon and live with my family in Gurgaon only. I am a stutterer since childhood; do not remember since when, maybe since I learnt to pronounce my name and believe me it was quite difficult for me to do so. Stammering has been like my closest buddy, never ditched me in any situation, happiness or sorrow. Like other stutterers I grew up with my buddy hoping that one day it will leave me forever. Days and years passed by but this buddy of mine never gave up. It accompanied me to various places, to different schools and to new neighbourhoods.
Fortunately, my jovial nature never let me down and frustrated through all my academic years. Though I always avoided to be pointed out in the classroom or in any sort of gathering to be asked to speak on something, it was terrifying. I was never ashamed of stammering, rather I was always concerned that why is this happening to me? Although I have lived in many cities, been to many schools but, interestingly, I never came across anyone in my group of friends who stammered.
My parents realised this anomaly of mine in school days but never took it seriously. Funny advises were given by people, the list of which is quite long, none of them really addresses the problem from the grass root level. Its easy to give advises especially when the advisor himself doesn`t have a clue about the problem and after all advises are absolutely free. My parents even took me to a small time speech therapy centre that was recognised by government. It was more of a summer vacations activity class for me where I had to go, solve some puzzles, make some funny faces and come back. It never took off.
After passing my "cushion years" (years in which you are protected by your loved ones and you choose to ignore your shortcomings) I entered the new phase of professional life. In this phase, one cannot make easy choices and one has to face all the adversities that come along with your anomalies. This is where my best buddy held my hand even stronger and slowly was dragging me to a state of low self confidence and dented self esteem. Suddenly, one fine day I woke up from this virtual sleep and decided this is the high time that I should now seriously think about getting rid of this childhood friendship with stammering.
From Internet I came to know about Mr.A.P.Singh's speech therapy centre. After recognising his efforts towards helping the people with speech ailments and my first face to face interaction with him, I instantly trusted my guts and made a decision to join him. I could see a new ray of hope that one day I would also become fluent and finally would bid a good bye to my long time buddy i.e. stammering.
It has been a month since I joint Mr.A.P.Singh`s Speech therapy and I can notice marked improvement in my speech. I can feel my buddy`s grip getting loose day by day. My hands are slowly and steadily slipping out of his hands. There are many peers who come from varied background and various places, some from far off places too, to rectify their stammering problem. We are given some basic exercises which acts upon our oral, respiratory and speech-thought synchronisation. We have to practice these set of exercises regularly.
The group therapy session that involves activities like public speaking and group discussions addresses the psychological quotient associated with stammering. It helps a stutterer to build self esteem & self confidence by overcoming the fears of stammering. Overall, the effort is to extract an orator out of a stutterer.
I am confident that this therapy would make me a fluent speaker one day by addressing each and every element of the stammering iceberg step by step. Of course the expert guidance of Mr.Singh is the driving thrust behind it.