Gerald D'Cunha

“The strongest of all warriors are these two- Time and Patience.” - Leo Tolstoy M y grandfather was a farmer and my dad was a mechanic. My aunts and uncles were all simple souls, with the most basic education… Did I say ‘the most basic education’? Yes, I did. One of my dad’s younger brothers, with his ‘most basic education’ and driving skill, had joined the Indian Army, where he served as an army truck-driver. During the Indo-Pak war of 1965, he was posted in Kashmir frontier… I was a little boy of 7, then. I still remember my uncle’s war stories! He had sustained several injuries during that war… But, those days, there was no way in which we could get any report about how things were in the war zone… TV, mobile phones, Internet, Social media, good news, bad news, fake news – yes, none of them existed, then. The local papers carried nothing and still, my grandparents, parents, my other uncles and aunts – yes, all of them wer...

T here is an old saying in English: “Many are the stars I see, but in my eyes, no stars like thee.” Tomorrow will be the ‘Valentine Day’… I wonder, if I still say this to my wife, my Valentine for 28 years! “Old is gold,” yes, I know, is another very old saying in English… But, again, I wonder, if that’s how we truly feel, when it comes to our Valentines! Well, it’s very sweet when we say, ‘hearts do not age’… Love, as Bette Midler’s beautiful song, ‘The Rose’, says, ‘ is a hunger, an endless aching need. ’… I love this song for its deep meaning laced in hope, tenderness and, yes, a lot of pain, too… I am sure, almost all of us have felt and expressed to our partners, in our intimate moments, what Alfred Nature said, “If I had a flower for every time I thought of you, I could walk through my garden forever.” But, after close to three decades in my marriage, I know as much as all married couples do, that, we will never have flowe...

T he Boards! The Board Exams! The Tenth! If we haven’t worried over them, and felt the anxiety and dread – I mean, while we grew up, both, as children as well as parents – then, we are a ‘blessed breed’. I have some dreadful memories of my own ‘tenth’. But, when it came to my son’s, I was not at all anxious… Not because, he was brilliant in studies or exceptionally self-disciplined; but, because, having dealt with thousands of young boys and girls over a period of more than four decades – having seen them go through the same feeling, which I had gone through when I was of their age, I have developed a detached attitude towards the ‘results’, which is the outcome of our efforts. As a teacher, I am very strict when it comes to young ones’ commitment to work. I lay a lot emphasis on their attendance, homework, concentration and behaviour inside the class… I insist on accountability, communication and being self- dependent … I encourage them to mind the compan...

I have made this confession several times before… That, my idea about ‘Success’ and ‘Happiness’ has undergone a sea-change over the years. Yes, for quite some time in my life, Success and Happiness were ‘goals’ in my life… Something I had to ‘achieve’… A station I had to ‘reach’, ‘arrive at’, after a long struggle and quest. But, it’s no more so. Now, to me, Success and Happiness, both, are found along the way, along my journey. I feel, if our struggles and quests in life are our journeys, Success and Happiness are what our hearts cherish along the waysides. Expecting to achieve Success or experience Happiness when we, ‘finally’, reach or stations, is just not going to happen… It’s going to be disappointing and frustrating! “Nobody ‘settles down’ in Life,” I would hear my friend, Dr. Deepak, saying this in our Workshops. He would then add, with a mischief in his eyes, “Only mud settles’!” Well, neither doctors like him nor teachers like me can settle...

“I f you believe in living a respectable life,” said, Dr. B.R.Ambedkar, “you believe in self-help which is the best help.” The words to underline here are ‘Living a respectable life’. Ambedkar himself is the epitome of such a life… Though he is worshiped as a Messiah and hope of the underprivileged and the oppressed people, he never became a man of such prominence and respect because of quotas and doles… He did it on merit, through dreaming and hard work… He did it by self-help. While it is important to give a hungry man some food, it is more important to ignite in his belly the fire to grow in life. Reservations and doles, which we get to hear from the Political class these days, in my view, will not help the poor and the oppressed people to come out of their condition. In fact, it will only make them remain in that state, fooled, brainwashed and blinded. W hen I was small, back home in my native village, the houses had hay roof and mud walls… T...

A week ago, my friend, Vivek, had shared with me a Post. Its source was unknown. In this Post, a man, who had crossed 60, when asked if he was changing, says, “Yes, I am changing…” and, goes about describing the little, subtle changes that have come in. I could relate to all of them, as, I, too, had turned 60 in last July… I found myself quietly checking, if the author’s changes were mine, too… Indeed, they were mine, too. Not only mine, I felt, they were of a vast majority, as well… When we are young, we are a lot impatient, critical and competitive. We tend to complain, fume and rant excessively… We sweat the small stuff. But, with age, most of us see the futility of such excessive restlessness – complaining, fuming and ranting… We learn to slow down… We become less argumentative and more accepting and peaceful… Some of the little, subtle changes, and the author describes in his Post are… Yes, I am changing: I’ve now stopped bargaining with...