Gerald D'Cunha

W hen two longtime bitter-enemies shake hands in friendship,   I find it very, very inspiring. It’s very, very reassuring, too. You can feel the heavy load of bitterness falling off… Just by watching enemies reconcile, we feel a lot lighter and relieved… To me, that happened just a few days ago, when the heads of South and North Korea came forward to do the impossible: Shake hands, genuinely! This means, no matter how ‘strong’ and ‘invincible’ you think you are – actually, you are not, till you make peace with your enemy. And, the enemy outside is just the reflection of the enemy inside… The most difficult part is to make peace with the enemy inside! I was reading in the newspapers, this morning, that American President, Donald Trump was instrumental in striking this peace between South Korea and North Korea. I smiled when some of his ardent admirers were calling for Noble Peace Prize for this effort... How ironical! A Nobel Peace Prize for the m...

I admire the team that is making the upcoming Hindi movie, ‘Sanju’, a biopic on Sanjay Dutt. The life of Sanjay Dutt has everything in it – the good, the bad and the ugly. Some of the choices he made, at various points of his life, had proved to him very costly and he had to pay a heavy price for those mistakes. The suffering in his life – be it his mother’s or first wife’s cancer – were beyond his control. But, through all of them, including his jail terms, Sanjay had been a graceful human being. Like many around me, I have known him only from what I have read about him or seen about him. But, I have, always, admired him for the way he had dealt with the consequences of his choices, and moved on in life… I seriously feel: If Sanjay Dutt knew, that he was making some wrong choices, he would not have made them. Now, the question: Did he really not know, that he was making some wrong choices – like doing drugs or possession of AK-47? My answer is a philosophical on...

“Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.” -   Napoleon Bonaparte I think, one of the most ‘toxic’ things that we consume every night, before we go to bed, is the 9-p.m. News. Obviously, ‘good new’ is no news, at all… It doesn’t sell, you see. Only bad news – dark, gory, brutal, hate-filled one - alone sells… And, that’s something so sickening about human psychology… We know the toxic news are not good for us when we go to bed. Still, we crave for it… We willingly drink the poison! There is so much good in this world. Yet, many of us choose to ‘misuse’ and ‘mis-interpret’ the stories relating to rape, corruption and other crimes. It’s funny – in fact, foxy – that, we misuse them to suit our prejudiced religious, political or ideological leanings. Our reactions to these rapes, scams and crimes clearly reveal who we are! I repeat: there is so much good in this world, there outside… It’s not rapes, loots and...

“ I'd rather have roses on my table than diamonds on my neck.” ―  Emma Goldman T he other day, a little one told the famous   - shall I call it the ‘legendary’ – story of King Bruce and the little spider in one of our P.D. sessions. Though almost all of us in the audience were familiar with the story, when this little one recounted the old spider-tale, we were all regaled… inspired! King Bruce, battered and defeated, had almost given up… He was anxious and torn with self-doubts… And, hiding there in a cave, he saw that little spider who tried to climb, but fell... tried again, and fell again… tried all over again and fell all over again… and, finally, made it to the top! Now, if a king could learn a valuable lesson in perseverance and faith   - ‘Try, try and succeed at last’ – by simply observing a little spider inside a cave… It only confirms the truth: that, we all need to cast away our bloated self-importance and simply make...

S elf-care is the foundation for building a healthy self-esteem. It’s, also, the foundation upon which our happiness in life stands. During a Workshop, last evening, someone asked me, “How can we be self-confident?” Knowing well, that I could not give an answer in one sentence, I said, “To me, it starts from self-care.” How can we ever serve ourselves if we do not care for our own selves? When we care for ourselves, we learn how to nurture our hearts… And, we, also, learn, that showing self-care is not being selfish! One of the most important ways of showing self-care is by freeing ourselves from the influence of toxic people and habits. When relationships with people turn toxic, we come to know inside our hearts. The constant conflicts, which arise out of trust-deficit, insecurity and self-centeredness drain us of our energy. These people – the energy-drainers – constantly dominate our consciousness, making us feel angry, anxious and diffident. Whe...

I n my last Blog, I wrote about two young girls, who found great joy in writing their Notes in their journal. Their writing came in the form of little poems… which I always call ‘scribbling’. Invariably, the young ones scribbled most of these Notes when they were sad, worried, afraid, confused and weighed down by regrets, shame or guilt. Actually, to their age, these moments of sadness and conflict were natural… But, being extremely sensitive and alive to life-situations, these young ones would capture these feelings and express them through their writings… As I, too, had started writings similarly almost at the same tender age, I could easily relate to these young ones… M y last Blog was about the pure joy a young one would derive through the process of self-expression and, how, slowly, the desire to ‘go big’ – publish, monetize, become famous and so on – would creep in. Though such desire also is natural, my emphasis in my last Blog was, that a young one should...