Gerald D'Cunha

  “Do not cross the bridge till you come to it.” A proverb   I t’s said, that worrying is like trying to cross the bridge before it comes. Today, suddenly, a couple of things have started occupying my mind space… I, suddenly, feel overwhelmed by these thoughts and find myself worrying. Interestingly, these things, which are weighing me down, lie in the future. When I calmly look at them, I am able to see the reality, that worrying about them is simply going to drain my energy… It’s not going to help me. Instead, if I slowly and steadily approach towards this distant bridge, I will be able to find strength to cross it… And, cross I will… For, I have crossed many, many such ‘distant bridges’ in my past, too… However, there is merit in being aware of these distant bridges… When I know, that I will have to cross them, whenever I come to them, it’s important to stay vigilant. Through this, I am able to prepare myself to cross it. Yes, burying my eyes in the sand and...

  “I may be going nowhere; but, what a ride?” Shaun Hick   I started an online Personality-development programme (of ten sessions) today. I just concluded the first session. As it was online, I wanted only ten participants in it, so that I could interact with each participant individually. They were all teenagers. But, I had encouraged two eager parents, too, to participate. From my years of experience, I know this very well: If you are clear about what exactly you want to convey to your participants, you, invariably, do. So, what was that I wanted to convey to this group through this 10-session progrmme? ‘Self-confidence and Communication Skills’! Could I achieve it without a roadmap, a plan? Yes, I had a roadmap in the form of a well-thought of PPT.   But, as we all know, a PPT is only a direction, a broad roadmap. As you keep going, there are scores of things that decide how the journey would be… You cannot plan every very word, line, example, story or w...

  “By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.” Benjamin Franklin   “Y ou are not your father’s care-off.” This line has stayed with me for over three decades. One of our senior trainers would nail it into the skulls of our young   boys and girls, to drive home the point, “Dude, don’t live on your pop’s wealth… Earn your own.” As I write this, I have a couple of my eleventh-standard students, who are still on a long holiday-mood. Normally, this is the time, they write their Prelims and get set for the Finals. But, this has been such a crazy year, here in Maharashtra… Till the other day, these kids were not sure of their eleventh-standard admissions. Finally, just a few days ago, they learnt about their respective colleges. Following this, some colleges stared their online lectures; some, didn’t. Some of these boys and girls are under my tutelage. There are two categories here: Those who are conscious of the uncertain times in which they are starting their ju...

  “Movement in a new direction helps you find  new cheese.” From the book ‘Who Moved My Cheese’ “I f you do not change, you become extinct.” This was the thought, that, finally, pushed Haw out of his ‘Entitlement mindset’ and walk into the ‘Maze of uncertainty’ in search of a new ‘Cheese Station’. One morning, when he and his friend Hem – the Littlepeople – woke up, they were shocked: There wasn’t any cheese left! They were so used to getting their cheese in this Cheese Station, that they had expected it to be there as their right… They felt strongly, that the cheese was their entitlement. So, they asked angrily: “Who Moved my Cheese?” Denial… Blame… Not fair… Anger! Hem and Haw, the Littlepeople, wanted whoever responsible for moving their cheese to put it back at their Cheese Station… “You better did!” But, then, ‘Who moved their Cheese?” Meanwhile, a little earlier that morning, two other friends, Sniff and Scurry, the little ...

“Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will spend its whole life believing that it is stupid.” – Albert Einstein W hen I was a student in school and college, I was as anxious of my exams as any other kid was. All students have the anxiety about their exams – maybe, some have it more and some have it less; but, all of them have it… because, all of us had. Today, after spending more than four decades in the teaching field – ‘coaching’ to be precise - I feel, I am an odd-man-out in this field. I say this, because, even though we teachers were very worried about our exams – at times dreadful – we, now, fail to understand the stress we all induce on young minds simply because we adopt the same approach which our own teachers had adopted: make them work for marks… and more marks! Marks are definitely necessary for getting admissions into the right courses and institutes. But, to take this to extreme level –...

“W e are rich,” beamed Kannan this morning in our Tai Chi class. Obviously, the topic of discussion, today, was the cash crunch. “You know what,” Kannan explained, “I had this old Jewish habit of putting a small amount – rupees 5, 10, 20, 50 whatever – into a box and forget about it. Last week, when everyone around me was crying for cash and cursing Government, banks and ATMs, I quietly opened my box… and behold, it had over nine thousand rupees… It was like a treasure… We are rich!” I smiled when I heard this new story from Kannan. Just a few days before the demonetization was announced, I had taken out the drawer of my wardrobe for cleaning up. I had not taken it out for years… As I cleared the piles of unwanted stuff, I was pleasantly surprised to find inside hundreds of rupees 5 and 10 coins. Unlike Kannan, I had not placed those coins there consciously… Instead, I had left them there casually without realizing that, one day, they might come handy when all the bi...

Pic.: Anima D'Cunha E very time I reflect on the famous statement (made very popular by John Lennon in his song, ‘Beautiful/Darling Boy’) – ‘Life is what happens to you while you are busy making other plans,”… Yes, let me tell you, very honestly, that a lot of my stress gets eased out… And, yes, it makes me smile, too. I wrote about my plan, last night, to attend the b’day party of one of my students. It was his 18 th b’day; and, some days ago, when I was in the midst of something, his dad had called me to invite. “Sure, I will be there with my wife to wish the young-man,” I had promised. So, as I wrote in my yesterday’s Post, I picked that inspiring book by Yuvraj Singh (‘The Test Of My Life’) to gift the b’day boy. At 9 sharp, when we reached the hotel where the party was planned, we read on the board: ‘ Mundan party of ……’! The first thing we did was to check if the hotel we had come to was the right one. Then, we checked with the re...