Gerald D'Cunha

  “You cannot have a positive life and a negative mind.” Joyce Meyer   T his is mid-August; and in Maharashtra, the students, who have cleared their tenth and wanting to join eleventh (State Board), are yet to go to their respective junior colleges. Some have just started going; but, they are unsure about the allocation of some subjects like Maths. On the other side, students from other Boards, such as CBSE, ISC, IGCSE etc., have completed almost 50 to 75 % of their portion in their colleges and private institutes. So, the State Board students, unless they have enrolled with some private tutors like me, are at the mercy of God – Ram Bharose! Here, I, too, have completed a significant portion of my eleventh-standard students belonging to the State Board. But, then, students are still joining; and I have to, patiently, go back to the Accountancy nursery… to teach them Debit and Credit, all over again.… Yesterday morning, I received a call from a young man. He said, tha...

  “If you don’t consciously choose trust and love in each moment, your subconscious policies will choose for you… and they usually choose fear.” Kimberly Giles   L ast afternoon, I attended a funeral ceremony of a senior citizen. He was one of the finest gentlemen I had known for years… very sensitive, compassionate, caring and giving. Every one, who had known him, says the same thing – “He was such a gentle soul.” In the same breath, most of us have asked this mysterious question: “Why bad things happen to good people?” Cancer, depression and several other complications made life of this fine gentleman quite sad and lonely… There must’ve been quiet pain, a deep sense of hurt and betrayal… worry, sadness and bitterness… and, it must’ve manifested in the form of depression, cancer and other complications… I hesitate to judge and reason out… The truth is that, the funeral pyre consumed all that was mortal – the pain, sorrow, bitterness, loneliness… all. At least fi...

Pic.: Devki Joshi T o me, Baba Amte had, always, been a great motivator. Many years ago, The Dawn Club had run a cover story on this hero of ‘Anandvan’ in its motivational magazine – ‘The BLOOM’. But, honestly, I hadn’t followed much about his son, Dr. Prakash Amte... It took just a 2-hr-15-min Marathi-movie to tell me who Dr. Prakash was and why he was a hero in his own right... as tall and as tough as his legendary father...Both, my wife and I, came back a lot moved by his life, remarkably portrayed by Nana Patekar and Sonali Kulkarni (as his wife)... Both, Dr. Prakash and his wife, Manda, had studied together in Government Medical College, Nagpur, where they fell in love with each other... Falling in love with each other is a ‘conscious choice’ a young man and woman make... It is the same conscious choice that they make when they promise each other in marriage,  before God – “I shall live with you in good times and bad times, in joys and sorr...