Gerald D'Cunha

“Whatever we perceive as good in the world   has always endured, and it always will.” Carmen Agra Deedy   L ast evening, while returning home, I met a stranger. Though I just said, he was a ‘stranger’ to me, I wasn’t a ‘stranger’ to him. “I read your blogs regularly, though you do not know me,” he said enthusiastically, “I look forward to read them every time... How do you find your topics, the simple but touching stories?” Obviously, I felt nice on what I had just heard from a person, who, without my knowledge, was reading what I have been writing, almost every day. I had to answer his question: “How do you find your topics, the simple but touching stories?” Well, I do not know whether or not my answer to this question was what I will be writing in this Post, today... W e all step out into the same world, each day... and we only find what we all are looking for. I do not know what you were looking for in the world outside as you stepped out of your house, this m...

  “Life is the soil, our choices and actions  are the sun and   rain, our dreams are the seeds.” Richard Paul Evans   “I really don’t care how much you score in your exams;” I keep screaming, with all my temper and passion, each day in my class, “but, I seriously care about the basics of your life... the foundation.” Now, when I scream like this before a young college student, why do I remind him about the ‘basics of life – the ‘foundation’ – now, when he/she is in his mid-teens? In this Post, I wish to touch upon only two such fundamentals: keeping an unbiased mind, and keeping our commitments. And, I wish to single out two of my students... O ne was very close to me when I started teaching here in Mumbai (Bombay) in 1980. This young boy, now is a retired person (from a government organization). He got reconnected with me on FB, some years ago. I have been able to scan the kind of mind he has developed over these years... It’s very, very narrow, extreme...

  “Things which matter most should never be at the mercy of things which matter least.” Johann Wolfgan von Goethe   E arly in the morning, a couple of days ago, my eyes fell on this book recommended on a digital-marketing site:     I loved the title – ‘FOCUS ON WHAT MATTERS’. It seemed, as though the author had written the book exclusively for me! So, instantly, I remembered a dear friend and a well-wisher, and wanted to share how I was feeling. I texted to him: “Good morning … The title of this book reminded me of you… Thanks for helping me to get out of that ‘s..thole’!” One can imagine how ‘dirty’ that word was… I did not say that ‘world’ … ‘that place’. By the way, which place am I talking about? In life, any place can be a ‘s..thole’ when staying there only makes life unpleasant, dirty, destructive… You see, we all make choices in life only as per our given level of awareness. So, you and I will never get into any s..thole with our eyes...

  “Start with a ‘Yes’, and see where that takes you.” Tina Fey   W hat excites me may not excite you, and what excites you may not excite me. But, in life, we all are excited by some things or the other. Let me apply this excitement factor in a student’s life. As a teacher, I get to interact with students who just walk into their first-year junior college, and, those who are in their final-year degree college. Typically, a Commerce student has six subjects to focus on. After weeks and months of teaching, I ask my students this question: “Do you love this subject.” It is interesting to find the answer… ‘Yes’ and ‘No’ are like black and white – the two extremes. The depth of ‘Yes’ matters a lot… Especially, for students. “The day you say ‘Yes, I do’, you start finding a career out of this subject,” I remind my students, “The early that happens, the better for you.” “Catch them young,” it is said. So, the best time to give that career advice is when they are just ...

  “Seize every opportunity along the way;   for, how sad it would be if the road you chose became the road not taken.” Robert Breault   T he book that inspired me the most –   I have told this countless number of times – was ‘Think and Grow Rich’ by Napoleon Hill. I found a used copy of this book on the footpath near Churchgate area when I had just come to Bombay (now Mumbai) and was jobless. But, I was dreaming… I earnestly wanted to know how people succeeded. I hadn’t read any motivational books before I read ‘Think and Grow Rich’, nor I had attended any motivational Workshops, leave alone watching today’s YouTube videos! So, when, on the cover of this book, I read ‘Whatever the mind can conceive and believe, it can achieve’… Yes, it came to me as the Manna from heaven… I wanted to hear it… I wanted to reinforce in me, that what I dreamt in my heart, I could achieve… and there was a way to do it! After more than eight decades since ‘Think and Grow Rich’...

  “They come through you, but not from you; and though they are with you, yet they belong not to you.” Kahlil Gibran in ‘The Prophet’   T here are some things we inherit from our fathers. If we wish to call them DNA or genes, let’s do. But, to blindly put it on our fathers is plain ignorance… It’s not fair! The saying, ‘Like father, like son’ – ‘As is the father, so is the son’ – has come from the Latin origin: “Qualis pater, talis filius”. But, I don’t think, that it is so either in Rome or anywhere else in the world! Between the father and the son, no doubt, there is blood connection. But, there is, also, that invisible, yet all-powerful, filter called ‘Our Choices’… Yes, just as the father made his own choices, the son makes his own. Period. My father was a born extrovert; I was a born touch-me-not! He, regaled strangers with his raw talent for singing (Konkani folksongs) at every available social venue; I desperately hid myself from everyone! He was an andhb...

  “Don’t leave a piece of jewelry at his house so you can go back and get it later; he may be with his real girlfriend.”   Amy Sedaris I n life, we learn some lessons the hard way. One of them is not to offer advice to any one – even our nearest and dearest ones – unless the advice is asked for. Did I say ‘even our nearest and dearest ones’? Yes, I did say. Let me be specific, here. Let’s look around us and see how some of our nearest and dearest ones blindly believe in fake news - divisive, communal, toxic and defamatory news, which is dished out, incessantly, through both mainstream and social media. When we see these dear ones of ours so addicted to this, what do we do? Initially, we try to tell them, “Honey, that’s fake news… That’s harmful… Stay away from it.” From where does our advice come? “From our concern, obviously,” we may think. But, do the other person/s think so? Chances are more, that our ‘out-of-concern advice’ may simply boomerang on us…...

“Don’t judge each day by the harvest you reap, but by the seeds you plant.” -      Robert Louis Stevenson A nupam, a dear friend of mine, is a young and energetic trainer in Soft Skills. It’s a delight to watch him involve his audience, mostly young ones. I know, from my own experience of over four decades, how difficult it is to keep them awake and alive. Unwittingly, we all – teachers, trainers, coaches, preachers and so on – devise our own methods of involving our audience, especially the young audience. There is no single method that suits all of us… We discover and settle for the one that suits us best… “Yes… No… May be?” Anupam throws the stone in the pond… And, instantly, you see the ripple effect… Invariably, it is ‘Yes Sir”! Your audience is made up of minds like your own. The attention span is short… Mind is fickle, it drifts. So, you need to keep tickling them, keep prompting them… “Hello… are you with m...