Gerald D'Cunha

  “Kindness is a language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see.” Mark Twain   I have come across two kinds of balloon sellers. The first kind are men with little babies in their  hands. This kind would keep pestering you to buy a balloon or two from them crying, “Saab, bachha ne khana nahin kaya.” Invariably, we would find this kind when our family is just walking out of a restaurant after dinner… It's a disturbing sight… Your family has had a sumptuous dinner, and here is the balloon seller weeping, that his little one is going to sleep hungry at night. “He is a habitual beggar; ignore him,” one side of me prompts me. But, then, I pull out a note of twenty or fifty, give him and walk away for my own guilt-free heart. The second kind are mostly little kids – around the age of 10 to 12 or something like that. I have met them selling balloons, key chains, tissue papers etc., and, yes, mostly while coming out of a mall, an ice-cream parlor or a restaur...

  “Plant the seed of desire in your mind and it forms a nucleus with power to attract to itself  everything needed for its fulfilment .” Robert Collier   S ome years ago, when I was chatting with a friend of mine, I found myself corrected by her. “We shouldn’t call them ‘maid servants’, they are our life-supports.” I had, casually, referred the lady who came to do sweeping and mopping at our place as our ‘maid servant’, even though I hadn’t meant to demean her in any way. But, when my friend tried to correct me, I really paused to see the depth of that term she had just toyed – ‘Life-support’. For last few months, we have a new ‘life-support’ at our residence. This woman – probably in her early forties – is so full of enthusiasm, so full of ‘Go-the-extra-mile attitude’, that, both my wife and I like her when she is around… She seems a part of our household. My wife and I both were unanimous about giving her the Diwali bonus, irrespective of the usual haggling ...