Gerald D'Cunha

W hat comes straight from my heart, that’s my greatest gift! During this Diwali season, like most around me, I, too, have either received several gifts – from sweets-boxes to exotic hampers – Or, I have given to others some (Just some ordinary ones though!). But, when I look back at all these, I feel amazed, that the finest gifts have, always, been the ones that have come straight from the hearts… with no frills or glamour around them! The thought behind the gifts, definitely, is what makes the gift special! A friend of mine has invited me for a lunch, this noon. He invites me every year during the Diwali season… Something homely with no frills around them…. Just for our friendship sake… and I love that. He doesn’t expect me to turn up with anything. Still, I do not prefer to go with empty hands. So, this morning, as I was picking something simple for my friend’s family at a nearby store, I bumped into another friend of mine there. While leaving...

L ast week, a friend’s family had booked tickets for me and my wife for the Hindi play – ‘Javeda’ (A forbidden love story). It was at Ravindra Natya Mandir auditorium in Prabhadevi. One of the gazals in the background was ‘ Tum ko dekha toh yeh khayal aaya’ from the movie ‘Saath Saath’ (1982). As you know, Jagjit Sing and his wife Chitra Singh had sung it so soulfully, that, here in the dark, quiet auditorium, the gentle background score had held us all spell-bound… On our way back, the melody of the song kept haunting me… Gazals and good music have that power! Today, while I was watching a news report, I learnt that, Kuldeep Sing, the music composer of this beautiful gazal, was one of the PMC Bank depositors and he had parked all his money in the doomed bank. Incidentally, Kuldeep Singh had, also, composed the music for the iconic song ‘ Itni shakit hame de data’ (from the movie ‘Ankush’ (1986) … Ironically, here was he, with...

W hat is good for the mind is good for the body. And, its opposite is, also, true – what is good for the body is good for the mind. If I feed junk into my belly, the body will, surely, react with discomfort… sooner or later that is. Similarly, if I keep feeding junk into my mind, won’t my mind react with discomfort… irritation, anger, sadness, prejudice, hatred, loss of empathy, even violence? The interesting thing is this: Just as the junk-food habit has crept into our eating system, over a period of time, the habit of junk-thinking, too, has crept into our thinking system, slowly, over a period of time… All of us, by now, are these junkies… endlessly surfing those useless videos and forwards… one after another then another and then another. We do not need the idiot box anymore… We do not need the ‘hall rooms’… Even the toilet will do… Even the holy places and the grave yards! Many of my friends have begun to realize what this frantic addiction to social me...

“Comfort zones are plush-lined coffins. When you stay in your plush-lined coffins, you die.” -  Stan Dale   A very dear friend of mine called me, a week ago. It was night time, and my friend wanted to take my advice on starting a new venture. He is in his mid-forties and blessed with a well-paying job in one of the multinationals. But, as it happens to most of us, my friend, too, has come to a point where the job has just become the proverbial milk-giving cow that keeps him alive… and dead, both! My friend, like most of us, is experiencing that familiar fear of losing his source of income – the cow – and, is unable to decide: to quit the job and follow his heart… Or, to quit his dream and simply stick to the job… I remember my early days in Mumbai… I, too, was an eternal dreamer. I was endlessly reading Napoleon Hill’s ‘Think and Grow Rich’ when I had no job, no money and no clue about the next meal. Napoleon Hill knew the importance of one’s abi...

“To handle yourself, use your head. To handle others, use your heart.”  - Eleanor Roosevelt W hat we reveal to the world about ourselves, dare I say, are not our true selves? And, did I say – “Dare I say?” Yes, I did. For, to reveal our true selves demands our true courage! “I need help”, “I have a problem”, “I do not know how to deal with this situation”… Yes, these admissions can come only from an earnest soul that yearns to save itself. I have experienced deep loneliness many a time. Many a time, I have woken up in the middle of the night with a cold sweat.   And, if I have survived those dark, lonely moments, it’s, certainly, not because I have been an ‘emotional macho’… But, it’s because, some ‘grace’ has come to my rescue… Let me tell you this: My problems may not be Himalayan in size. But, then, for each one of us, our respective problems are high, tough and scary enough to scale. Many of us f...

D uring our last three summer programmes on Personality Development, I had shown to our young ones the talks by Aisha Chaudhary. Among dozens of so-called motivational videos, Aisha's, always, stood apart. She was a teenager... barely 15-year-old when she started speaking from public platforms... Standing sometimes , sitting sometimes. But, alert and awake, always. Who is Aisha Chaudhary?  Through her talks, I and our young students had gathered some details about this young girl... How she was born with a rare immune deficiency disorder - for which at the age of six months, she had to undergo bone-marrow transplant in a London hospital... and, how, when when she was a 13-year-old, the side-effects of chemotherapy came in Aisha's life in the form of an acute lung-disease called - Pulmonary Fibrosis...  Well, all these details, and how passionate Aisha was about life - her fondness for dogs, passion for sketches and paintings, love for music...

I n last one week, I came across two identical situations… In one of them, an ex-student of mine, who I had not met ever since he passed out T.Y B.Com some fifteen years ago, had come to meet me. The purpose was: he wanted me to teach one of his neighbours’ son. Apparently, the neighbour’s family had been going through a tough time financially. “Sir, I want this boy to be a graduate. I have decided to take care of his fees.” In the second one, the Good Samaritan was a mother of one of my ex-students. This woman had brought along a newly-married woman from her community. Apparently, the young woman had to leave her college, get married to a Mumbai man (with no enough schooling). My student’s mother was very concerned about the young woman… “Sir, I want her to complete her graduation, learn to speak in English, so that she can raise a good family… I have decided to take care of her expenditure on studies.” What option do such gestures leave me with? The least, I, a...

"Through my whole life, I did not know if I really existed.  But, I do... and people are starting to notice." - Joker I am an old-timer, you see. So, I went to the multiplex one day before and booked two tickets (for my wife and me ) for the 'Joker' movie. The person at the counter confirmed and reconfirmed from me, at least three times, that none of the two was a minor. I smiled and  assured him, that my wife and I had long entered into our adulthood... "My mother, always, tells me to smile and put on a happy face," Arthur Flek,  Joker, says in this movie! Chalo, I did not tell my wife what happened at the ticket counter. But,  yesterday, just while walking into the theatre, I brought myself to tell her, that the movie might leave us a lot 'disturbed' - rather 'shaken'... "Why are you telling me this now?" she shouted, "now that we are inside." Good, I had booked the ti...