Gerald D'Cunha

  “The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance; it’s the illusion of knowledge.” Daniel J. Boorstin   A few things, which I claim, “I know”, often, make me arrogant. And, unless, someone shakes me hard to make me realize the fact, that, there are so many things, which “I don’t know” – yes, till then, I tend to think this world revolves around me… How silly and how small I am! For example, right since my schooldays, I have been not only bad in technology, I have also been suffering from its phobia. Today, my commonsense tells me, that these phobias are my baseless fears… Many of them – all of them, rather – can be overcome. Yet, I haven’t stopped to work on many of them. So, they are still there in my life sending me on a panic mode quite regularly… The little problems I face in my daily life – be it related to plumbing, electrical work, computer, internet, mobile phone etc. - are enough to put me under stress. Need I have the required skills to fix them? Pr...

  “The punishment of every disordered mind is its own disorder.” St. Augustine of Hippo T he ‘master key’ to our personal peace – peace of mind – is not to participate in every ‘battle’ that is being waged around us. Why people raise these battles – well, it’s not for me to judge. What is for me to judge is whether or not I should be a participant in that battle… “Let’s choose our battles wisely.” I humbly accepted this piece of advice from one of my friends, a couple of years ago. In my ignorance – and arrogance – I was getting more and more drawn into the cesspool of ‘meaningless’ and ‘toxic’ battles around me. I was justifying my involvement under the garb of ‘I can’t be a mute spectator’… Yes, that’s what getting me sucked more and more into meaningless battles – arguments and counter arguments, coups and counter coups, allegations and counter allegations… One doesn’t need to fight battles with weapons like guns and swords… The toxic gun-power of the mind is equally let...

  “Tough times don’t define you, they refine you.” Carlos A Rodriguez “W hat Pandemic?” I think, around us, today, there are two kinds of people… The first kind, who are heard saying – “It’s pandemic”. The second kind, who are heard asking – “What pandemic?” ‘Tough Times Never Last, But Tough People Do.' This was the title of one of the most popular and motivational books of eighties. It was the time, newly arrived in this city, I was trying to understand how people defied their deprived condition and succeeded. Napoleon Hill, Dale Carnegie and Norman Vincent Peale, undoubtedly, dominated my mind-space in understanding the success mind-set. ‘Positive thinking’! But, it was Dr. Robert Schuller’s book that got me introduced to the philosophy of ‘Possibility Thinking’… In short, the ‘practical positive thinking’… Whatever, whatever… We all know, that most of the rags-to-riches heroes, who we try to emulate, hadn’t – and haven’t – read any of those motivational books. That wi...

  “In the province of mind, what one believes to be true either is true or becomes true.” John Lilly W henever there is sadness, depression, irritation, anger, anxiety and violence within me, I can trace its source to my one kind of psychological attachment or the other. Often, the most common source of my ‘mental unrest’ is the attachment to my deeply-rooted beliefs, ideologies and prejudices. Like, if I am excessively attached to my religious beliefs, or, if I am a die-hard devotee of a particular political party, its ideology or leader, then, any challenge or questioning of my belief can send my mind into a tailspin – causing a very reactive behaviour from me… This is evident whenever I watch a religious, political, racial – or any kind of – debate. If I have decided to take side – route for one particular faith, ideology, leader etc., then, my mind can easily turn into a ‘mob-mind’… I cheer with the mob; I boo with the mob. My critical thinking, therefore, goes out in the wind!...

  “Maturity is when your world opens up, and you realize, that you are not the centre of it.” M.J. Croan T he other day, I was teaching a group of my eleventh-standard students. In the middle of seriousness, I heard, in the background, a little kid screaming at the top of its voice… and, suddenly, my student – Latika* – screaming back, supported by the sound of blows. The video was on a off-mode… So, we couldn’t’ see what the WWF was all about. So, I asked, as others laughed loudly, “What happened Latika – Who’s it in the room?” “Sorry Sir,” Latika said embarrassed, “It was my ‘kid brother’.” “Kid brother’?” I exclaimed, “How old is he?” “3, Sir,” Latika replied. “And you?” “Just completed 15.” “It must be a great fun at home, every day, na?” I teased. “Not fun, Sir, it’s a circus,” Latika reacted as others enjoyed this new twist in our otherwise serious and boring online teaching-learning circus… “Any of you have a kid brother or sister, like Latika, at home?...

“If you would get ahead, be a bridge.” Welsh (on ambition)   A mbition is not only a highly misunderstood word, it’s also a grossly misused one. When I first woke up to this vocabulary, I was all set to step out of my college. I was still filled with self-doubts… shy, scared and overwhelmed by the feeling of unworthiness. Simultaneously, there was a dream inside my heart, which was restlessly struggling to make its way through the mess called my mind. The result? More self-doubt, more anxiety! It’s here, on the streets of Bombay – more than four decades ago - when I found an used copy of Napoleon Hill’s ‘Think and Grow Rich’, that I was first given the ‘ deeksha’ of ‘Ambition’ … Good, that it came to me when I needed it the most. But, in retrospect, I say, that it’s even better, that I learnt, right at the outset, that the deeksha of ambition could lead me to be a worthy human or an unworthy one. I was just getting into the world with my college education tucked around my mi...

  “A smiling face, after a certain age, is a triumph of the human spirit.” Efrat Cybulkiewicz   R ecently, I have started stepping out of my house on some very important and urgent work. Obviously, taking all the Covid-related precautions. I really had to pinch myself to check if a life, such as this, was real! It was! Yesterday, in the autorickshaw in which I was commuting, the driver was a young man. I struck a cordial conversation with him. “It’s pushed us back at least by two years,” he said, “Personally, whatever I had planned and worked for, now two years behind schedule!” I thought about myself: “I am 62… How many years behind schedule I am?” I really do not know… But, one thing I know: a lot of what I had meticulously planned and worked for has been pushed behind… Like the stranger who drove the auto, I, too, am behind schedule… But, then, who prepared the schedule? Who planned, and who was working towards those plans? Did the schedule get disturbed...

  “It isn’t the mountain ahead that wears you out, It’s the grain of sand in your shoe.” Anonymous   W ho are we in this world – ‘The Outsiders’ or ‘The Insiders’?   So much fuss – and abuse – is made of these words!   When Barack Obama became the first Black President of America, we got to hear that he was an ‘Outsider’… which, basically meant, that he was not White, not wealthy and did not come from a political dynasty, and, above all, he made it on his own! Did we hear the similar narrative, when Mr. Modi came to rule Delhi? Remember the folklore – ‘The boy who once sold tea at a railway station in Gujarat’? Pritvi Raj Kapoor was an ‘Outsider’. But, we never said the same about his decedents. So, right from Raj Kapoor to Taimur, all have been painted in one brush as ‘The Insiders’! Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, Jack Ma and men and women like these will, always, be called the ‘Outsiders’… but, not their sons and daughters. Donald Tr...

  “Happiness is gentleness.” Hugh Prather “G entleness towards self and others makes life a little lighter,” Said Deborah Day. A little lighter, or a lot lighter? And, is being ‘lighter’ same as being ‘happier’? The Wise say, that only the strong can be gentle; cruelty always comes from the weak. I am very fond of, both, Barack Obama and his wife Michelle. There are scores of videos on YouTube, in which we get to see their interaction with a cross-section of people, both inside and outside the White House. It’s so delightful to watch how they treated people – all people – while they occupied the most powerful position in the world… They treated everyone with kindness and respect… Is it not, then, true, that ‘Only the strong can be gentle’? Deborah Day rightly points out, through the first part of her statement, that it’s not possible for us to be gentle towards others unless we are gentle towards self, first. In one of the videos I watched a couple of days ago, Bara...

  “ In Beverly Hills… They don’t throw their garbage away; they make it into television shows.” Woody Allen   A couple of nights ago, I wanted to talk to one of my friends. It was around 11.45 in the night. So, even though he was my friend, I was a bit apprehensive about calling him at that time of the night. So, I texted him, saying, that if he was still awake, I wanted to talk on something urgent. He immediately called me. “Sorry for disturbing you at this time;” I said, “I really thought, that you had gone off to sleep.” My friend, who is in his early fifties, lives alone in the house. These are Covid times; and to many of us, despite being surrounded by our family members, these have been quite lonely and scary times. I have been concerned about my friend, and, have enquired about him several times. When I called him late that night, he sounded charged up… The reason? He was deeply involved in one of the T.V. debates on Sushant Singh Rajput… “Whatever people...

“You smiled and talked to me of nothing; and I felt that, for this, I had been waiting long.” Rabindranath Tagore   I write these blog posts, almost daily. I am very fond of reading good Prose and Poetry. The new words, idioms and phrases, figures of speech, proverbs and quotations simply fascinate me. In fact, I have written, edited and published over thirty books on behalf of the Dawn Club. Some of these books have been about improving one’s English. But, then, it looks very strange to me, when I reflect on my own situation in school and college while learning Prose and Poetry… I wasn’t good in both. The first time I started loving good English literature was in my twelfth standard. There was a Jesuit priest to teach us English classics, such as Shakespeare’s famous Plays and Poetry. It was the first time, that I woke up to the beauty of Old English… King Lear, Julius Caesar, Merchant of Venice, Romeo and Juliet and so on. We, also, had good English teachers to teach u...