Gerald D'Cunha

  “Courage does not always roar. Sometimes, courage is the quiet voice, at the end the day, saying, ‘I will try again tomorrow’.” Mary Anne Radmacher   T here are two kinds of reunions… The first kind is the one we get to do after months of meticulous planning. The other kind is the one that just happens, without any planning, just spontaneously. The second kind is what I cherish the most… It springs from a clean heart… simply childlike. On this Sunday, my wife and I had to attend the Month’s mind mass of one of our relatives in Kharghar, Navi Mumbai. After the   mass, we had to join for a simple lunch at the residence of the deceased family. I had informed friends of mine, Dr. Kumar and his wife Yashoda (a student of my first batch in Atomic Energy Jr. College, sometime in 1981), that we would be paying a visit to them. They lived just a minute away from my relatives’ place. As we were relishing the aromatic filter-coffee, I remembered another friend of min...

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...