Gerald D'Cunha

"Two men looked out from prison bars; one saw the mud, the other saw stars.” Dale Carnegie in ‘How to Stop Worrying and Start Living. A ttitude is, often, called ‘outlook’. Shall I say, it is “How we look outside?” Whatever that is and however you define it, in every situation we have the same two options: to see the brighter side or to see the darker one! This lockdown time is not something we have chosen for ourselves; it is something that has been forced upon us… yes, for our own good. So, it’s called ‘quarantine’ and not ‘imprisonment’. It’s like the ‘house arrest’… Right? Whatever… The point I want to make, today, is this: All of us are, presently, looking out from our ‘prison bars’… Some of us see the mud, and some of us see stars… What else is there to see? I have been teaching some of my students online ever since this lockdown started. My students, mercifully, are not the children of those migrant ...

“The real man smiles in trouble, gathers strength from distress, and grows brave by reflection.” - Thomas Paine T here is a fierce debate going on – and, it doesn’t seem to end – on the manner we have responded to terrorism in Kashmir, particularly, on the manner our government has responded to the latest Uri killings. Those who are extremely loyal to P.M. Narendra Modi are busy defending him… why the measured response is the most sensible thing, and not the outright retaliation. On the other hand, those who are not so loyal to him - especially the Modi-baiters – remind us of how aggressively he had blasted in Aap Ki Adalat (Rajat Sharma’s show) mocking at the knee-jerk response of the PM of the time, Mr. Manmohan Singh. Modi had roared on that show like an angry lion… So, his detractors, now, point to us about the very same knee-jerk response he is now showing, when he is in PM’s hot seat… I like both my Prime Ministers – Narendra Modi an...