While growing up, LeeJude D’souza used to stutter quite a lot but luckily, he had a cousin, who used to also stutter like him. So, the medical condition wasn’t really an alien concept to him. He shares, “My parents never made me conscious that I stammer, they just told me this is normal. So, I never really went to a doctor.” Obviously, there were instances where he faced challenges at local shops in the neighbourhood and personally, it wasn’t always easy. “In my life, as a kid, I only knew me and my cousin brother, so it felt like a lot of burden.” However, after realising that there are many others who also stutter, he never thought of it as an issue, and one that Uttan local will just have to live with. 

Today, the 35-year-old is an ad film professional, who is confidently dealing with the challenge on a daily basis. In fact, he even has a producer who stutters, and has seen that the latter is completely confident. “So, I think, if he stammers and is a producer and can do his work well, why should I think otherwise?” Luckily for the Mumbaikar, stuttering, or stammering as it is more commonly known, was hardly an issue for him, compared to what countless other people face on a daily basis. It most often than not starts in school where oratory skills are necessary while giving exams and ends up trickling into one’s social life as people get older.