Kanpur-Gandhinagar-Bangalore-Calcutta

Flashback (Class-II in school):

Senior:Abhishek say ‘Kite’.
Me:Tite.

Laughter all around. Reason- I used to stammer. Even students from class 12th used to come to see my special talent. I could’ve easily won the Talent Hunt of my school as a standup comedian without even cracking a single joke.

That made me go into a shell. I stopped talking to anyone. Even in interval I used to sit in a corner and study. Well if you don’t speak at all then nobody would come to know if you can pronounce K or T correctly. I became an introvert and was scared of talking to anyone new. Slowly my seniors and classmates stopped picking me and the folklore died. Only thing that remained was my silence.

College:
I had never tried to rectify my wrong habit. I never needed to -as I hardly spoke. Now when you need to impress a girl of your life, you need to speak and speak smartly. I was in dilemma. To speak or not to speak.
So I figured out a middle path. I would try to avoid words starting with alphabets K,C,T and few others.

Hey hi! So how are you doing?
Doing good.
(Seeing a book in my hand) So, which subject you’re reading?
It’s a Physics thing related to movement of bodies.
You mean Kinetics?
Oh yeah. I thought you would not have heard that name.
You think I’m dumb?
No no. Absolutely no. Well when are you going home?
Maybe next week. Where is your hometown?
Well I’ll give you hints. You guess. It’s largest town of UP, has an IIT.
I don’t know.
(Come on!) Kanpur(saying very slowly).
What? Didn’t hear you.
Hey how is your assignment going?
Going great. But some idiots are not doing their part and I’m sort of getting tensed.
Ahh. Don’t worry (fearing my team mates of the Humanities electives project would be thinking the same). Anyways, what are you doing tomorrow? We can have dinner.
Yeah. I’ve not been out for a long time. We can. What’s the place called?
It’s a food chain of Italian dishes. It has many branches all over India.
Still, it might have some name.
Pijja Hut.
That was the moment when I realized I was doomed. In the excitement of having dinner with her, I had forgotten to censor my words. I had increased my chances of seeing her again from 0 to minus infinity.
What? No it’s not the way it’s pronounced. It’s pronounced with a z like hard S.
Ok. I know I’m not great in pronouncing words. I know that.
Yeah, even I have noticed that.
You knew? You knew from all this long.
Yeah. But it’s such a small thing. Why are you getting so frustrated? Just try once again and you can pronounce it correctly.
Yeah. You want to make fun of me. Right?
Come on. Ok. If you can pronounce once correctly, till we reach the girls hostel, we’ll have dinner tomorrow. Else the plan stands cancelled.
Now I was in a shock. My nightmares were coming true. I just walked with my head down and almost in stage of crying.
Come on!
I realized this was my only shot. This was the only chance for me to conquer my fears of lifetime. And also that was my only chance to go out with her.

Pijja
Pijza
Piiiiija


No. Try to focus on middle part. It’s z and not j.

Pizza
Pizza
Pizza
Hey very good. Let’s meet tomorrow evening then.
I couldn’t believe it. I had done it. It might not be a very big achievement but for me it was like climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro.
And that was the moment I realized- She is my dream girl. She never looked down upon me. I was strong when she was around. I was not ashamed to make mistakes infront of her. I was not ashamed to be myself. I could go down to bullies of my class and could Pizza-fy them.

That’s the moment when I realized- May be this is what true love looks like.


PS- My bad! It's called as Lisping and not stammering. Thanks to Anshul for pointing that out.