The "JOB"

It is just the day, a couple of months ago, that I used to see 7 o’clock only once in a day (not surprisingly, in the evening) but these days the pleasure of the clock has been doubled as I see the same 7 o’clock mark twice (I mean I always try to, but can’t let the “Clock” take all the pleasure and that too everyday). The mornings were the part of the day which my eyes were not supposed to see. 

It is just the day, a couple of months ago, that I never used to know the answer of one Specific Question “Beta!! What day it is??” Or say  “What is the Date”. My answers were ummmm ahhhhh “Shayad Wednesday ho sakta hai, ya Friday hoga, ya ummmmm Pata Nahi !!”. Dates were only important when I used to eat it otherwise it was like “Kya Fark Padta hai??” but these days, I guess the Calendar would be much more fortunate to know that it has a +1 on his “Fans List” who keeps looking at it atleast twice a Day.

It is just the day, a couple of months ago, that work was interpreted as Playing Basketball, watching movies and going out with friends and would not yield anything except a “Good Night” sleep but these days it has been, making yourself available to a group of people from 9 am to 6 pm yielding an addition of four figure salary (at the end of 30 days) in your bank account but still fails to give you a “Good Night” sleep. 

These days I have been in a “Job”. For most of the people in a crowd it is the happiest aspect in their life but unfortunately for a Stutterer it is the most “Scariest” one. The basic scare starts off when he is looking for a job and even after a lot of doings and undoing’s if a gets one on his abilities (like I got), the scare starts eating him from inside that What will happen if somebody asks me something?? What will happen if I miss a client due to my stuttering?? What if, I have to respond to my boss?? What if, I have to ask him for a leave?? What if, I get stuck in front of my subordinates?? What if, people start making fun of me?? What if people don’t take me seriously?? What if, I mess the job??

So these are the “What Ifs“ that normally a stutterer goes through when he/she is working, and as I m a stutterer too I also felt the same. Those “Ifs and buts” were present there for me too and were making collisions in my head asking me, what will I do if so and so happens? I believe these are the questions created by our “Very Conscious” stuttering brain that never wants us to feel that we are normal people. We (or I should prefer I) have spent so much of time stuttering in our life that we can’t think about anything else that is not associated with it.

The day I joined the job, for a couple of weeks I was so carried away in these thoughts that I never knew what I was supposed to do in the company and was mostly sitting and pondering about unnecessary things(like these “What Ifs”). This made my life at work boring and monotonous. One thing that helped me was: an year ago, I learnt a very important lesson in my life, that if u Accept and start Living your “Stuttering” that is the moment it no longer remains a Fear for you, it just becomes a part of your life and it will be that part of your life on which, if you look down the road you won’t feel the thorns of not being able to speak fluently but will feel the joy of living it and that too with a big Smile on your face.

Since I started keeping myself focused on job rather than stuttering, those “Ifs” don’t cross my mind now and even if I get stuck at some point I never feel embarrassed nor i am clueless about what to do, I either stop and restarts from where I left or I continue with the block. It is comparatively easy to stop while you are in a block and restart with what you were saying but continuing with the block is the difficult part. I prefer to do the latter one because later on I get to realise that what kind of faces I was making while I was in the block which makes me keep it in notice that I don’t make it again and sometimes I even smile looking in the mirror by making those same expressions again.

So, Life is as it is you make it. It depends on the person what choices does he make and I chose to be happy. 

The Interview

After facing 16 rejections in different company here I was for another interview for getting a job (desperately). There is a wise saying "Experience is what you get when you don't get what you want" and after every interview i was getting the "Experience" , which i guess many would not like to taste (as it seems to be bitter).

There was  a time when  i was well focused for further studies but then, it all started when everybody around me was in a race to get placed (and that too in a well paid "Good" company), this happens only in our country where engineers are raised like cattle for some sort of race!


It begins from the race of getting good marks in high school then getting into top most engineering college to getting a well paid job etc. etc. Once, I too was in this race; things got worse day by day, and by the time I reached 13th job interview failure, things were frustrating.

So here it is, what the first interview was like: the interviewer asked me several questions in my technical background and my answers were a partially incorrect, mostly correct, a bit complicated and confused (because of me trying to hide my Stutter made me stutter a lot more). At the end of my interview i asked the HR officer about the salary breakup (which was an obvious question to be asked) and when i didn't get selected I told myself and others that, "so and so" was the reason of my not getting selected. This was the stepping stone to my wrong attitude of accepting failures and since then several interviews went by and I was just giving excuses to myself and others that , "so and so" happened this time that is why.. etc. etc.

 After facing 11 of the interviews, when i was completely sick of facing another one, I just went browsing on Internet about Stuttering and (fortunately) I saw the website of TISA, which had interviews (about personal experience of being a stutterer) of several people. One interview which influenced me a lot  was that of Jai Prakash Sunda Sir, this was because he resembled a lot like me (he also did engineering and was sharing some experience which I had also felt in my lifetime). There was a contact number also given on the website and  as I wanted to know a lot more about him facing his job interviews and how did he handled all this things, I decided to call him up. There were some useful advice from him which didn't felt right at that moment (basically because of my lack of awareness and knowledge) and I just let it go.

He also told me about the National Conference on stuttering, which was going to be held in Bhubaneshwar at the end of the last year and due to the immense let down of my confidence and desperateness for doing something to remove it (-stuttering, because by then i had started feeling that , my stammer is the reason of not getting a job) and I decided to go there, as it felt like there is nothing left in me to do because I am a born stutterer and nobody will give me a job due to my stutter.

During the conference, when i met with more of people like me and saw the greatness which they have achieved in their life. At that time there was some part of me which was willing to pay the price whichever needed to make it work and the price was acceptance of myself as it is. I also heard the point of views of Dr. Satyendra Srivastava Sir , Dr. Satya Mahapatra Sir, Dr. Manimaran Sir during the conference which made me realise that, stuttering is not  a problem it is just the way we speak, which is dealt as a problem, so it is us who have made it a problem but in actuality it isn't one.
         
After the National Conference I took a big step in accepting my biggest fear of life i.e. acceptance of my stammer and although my stammering increased after I came back from NC this was the time when i really faced interviews with confidence because then only I learnt about the importance of being a good communicator rather than being fluent for nothing. There is one thing that we stutterer always forget in our attempt to be fluent i.e. we miss the entire communication by just pretending to be fluent and be someone else.

I was also doing the same thing in all those 13 interviews, trying to be fluent rather than being a good communicator and letting my answers being understood. After NC I have faced 3 interviews out of which the 1st company didn't select anybody from our college, then the 2nd one in which at the end of the interview,  I was appreciated by the HR Officer of that company for the way i had conducted my interview (the results are awaited, as it is pending) and the last one in which I got selected.

The interview in which I succeeded was like, i was initially asked to tell about myself briefly and i answered:

"I am Mohit Jaiswal, i live with my father and mother at Kharagpur. My father is an Advocate and my mother is a Homemaker, I did my schooling from Kendriya Vidyalaya IIT Khargpur. My hobbies are playing basketball and solving rubik's cube."
Then, i mentioned that "Sir, i am a Stammerer and at times during the interview i might get stuck, but this doesn't mean that I don't know the answers or i am nervous, it is just the way i speak."  They said "We are perfectly okay with it and we are here to judge your technical background so this will not be the thing to worry, but the technical areas will."

Then he grilled me with questions on different subjects and most of the time they were satisfied with my answers, at the end of the interview one of the interviewer asked me about Dynamic Balancing and I explained static balancing to him. He answered "Whatever you have said is perfectly alright but this isn't dynamic balancing". After this, he said "It was nice meeting you Mohit" and then I left the room.

During the entire interview i was stuttering now and then but still, as I had confronted my stammering already at the beginning of the interview, this helped me, by freeing me from that extra effort to be fluent. So, the acceptance of stammering was the key to my good communication to the interviewers, which helped me get through with the interview of the only Aeronautics company of India and I think by accepting his/her stammering any stutterer can do whatever they wish to do in life, because the main problem is this fear of getting stuck, pulls them back constantly and when you get past this fear, there are very few things which matters.

It's Two Different World Out There !!!

At first a quick apology to all the people "Stutterers" whom i promised to e-mail the contacts and ids of the participants of the NC. Sorry Guys and Elaine mam!! I was stuck with some stuffs and you will get the contacts on your e-mail id as soon as possible.

Since 28th of last month, there have been two different worlds out there for me i.e. the one with the stutterers ( from 28th Dec to 2nd of this month) and the other one, right from moment (2nd Jan) i left the IHS Campus Bhubaneshwar. Let's say the former one as W1 and the latter one as W2. In W1 it was like, i don't have to pretend neither do i have to hide the way i talk, whether it  be me saying प.. प.. प.. प Pramendra or just Pramendra , but as soon as i was in W2, it was like Oh My God why do i have to say प.. प.. प.. प Pramendra, why can't i manage with some thing else?? Why does everyone have to bear an extra 2 or 3 sec for me or to be more correct  "of me". In W1 i never missed an opportunity to express myself (means whenever possible), but then later in W2 it was like, "okay leave it!!" why do i have to explain myself or these things, to people who are dumb.

But these two different worlds have shown me that what I am and whatever may be the reason or the cause I am bound by my instincts. I took acceptance of my stuttering as a challenge, that let's see how much i can push myself, what are my limits and by what extent i can further push them off. In  this regard, i went to my place i told my mom that, look mom i stutter and you also know this. I don't have any problem with this because i no longer consider it as a problem , it will be very nice of you, if you also don't consider as a problem because it isn't, it is just the way i talk and i am not afraid that what people will think of me or do think of me. I know it was very hard on her because since childhood nobody discussed my stuttering and out of the blue i am asking her to be okay with it, but she was quite supportive and she said i was always okay with it and still i am. Then i discussed it with my friends and not so surprisingly they where also okay with it, although few were shocked about, me using the word Hakla for myself and other fellow stutterers more frequently, which they used to call me for teasing.

Still, down somewhere there is a kid who wants to hide it out, for example i am not able to use the bouncing technique as i frequently used it in IHS. I am still uncomfortable when i get stuck, which i wasn't back there in IHS. Even if my brain says that i have to use bouncing because the fear is still out there, i never end up doing it. As far as i think it is the instinct which i have developed in past 20 years (that i have to hide my stuttering) is coming in my way but the thing is now i am enjoying this because (as in Late Steve Jobs words) i have now started figuring out the dots of my life and i think, i just have to be patient and confident in what i do and one day down the road even on the well worn path the dots will connect and that will all make the difference.