Gerald D'Cunha

Pic.: Ruma Chatterjee A lady greeted me when I was in the bank, this morning. “How are you, ma’am,” I enquired, “How is teaching going on?” “Teaching and me?” she reacted in surprise, “No, sir, that’s not my cup of tea! Anything in Finance, YESSS!” Her face lit up when she declared ‘Finance’... and, yes, there was that extra-ordinary self-confidence evident in her “YESSS!” Well, she wasn’t a teacher like me. Yes, I was wrong there. She was the Finance head in her company. “Sir, one needs loads of patience to be a teacher, which I don’t have,” the lady confessed. Then she added, with a twinkle in her eyes, “How do you continue to do it for decades?” A n hour before that, I had lost my head in the class. One of the SY B’Com girls was telling me: If you add 20,000 to 1,00,000, you get 12,000! I noticed the way she had placed the commas... I counted the zeroes... They were all haywire. It was the nth time I was pointing her mistakes to her... So, I was ar...

Pic.: Gloria Pinto I just came back after visiting Collin, my student, who is down with Jaundice. His parents are abroad and he lives, here in Mumbai, with his uncle and aunt and his adorable grandma. They hail from the same native land, Mangalore, from where I hail. So, they were very happy to talk to me in Konkani; Collins’s elderly grandma was particularly delighted and kept talking to me so much about her good-old-days in Mangalore, which, was some six decades ago! She spoke about the lovely people, the fantastic food, the churches, feasts, fields, streams, hills and above all her wonderful childhood. What a pleasure and pride this warm 80-plus woman took in rewinding her memories… I was her faithful beholder, today! It was a pleasure soaking in her stories… I did it happily. And, then came the important part of the visit: Collin’s aunt proudly laid before me, on the table, some amazing idlies (which we call ‘Sannah’ in Konkani) and so...