Gerald D'Cunha

  “All colours will agree in the dark.” Francis Bacon   I just found some pictures of mine with a group of students. The pictures are nearly thirty-five years old. My first reaction, when I looked at those pictures, was – “OMG!” The “OMG!”, as you must’ve guessed, meant this: “Did I look so bad?” I remembered Dilip, who had clicked those pictures. When he had clicked them, thirty-five years ago, I had reacted the same way – “OMG! Do I look so bad?” Dilip’s response was instant and typical of him: “Sir, jaisi shakal waisi nakal!” Dilip may have been my student. But, his freaky response had an important lesson for me: “Hello, you will see yourself exactly how you want to see!” If I have a healthy self-esteem, then, I am able to appreciate what I see in my pictures. If not, no matter how good the pictures are, I would always react – “OMG! Do I look so bad?” Thirty-five years on, I still have some issues with my pictures – I never look good in them, you see… It’...

Pic.: Anima D'Cunha L ast evening Shri Ram Mohan (Swami Brahmavidhananda) was taking a Workshop for our Young PD students. The subject was ‘Handling our Emotions’. During the Workshop, he was guiding the young-ones through various styles of distorted thinking. One of them was ‘Personalisation’… How some of us think crookedly – that, whatever others think or say has something to do with us… We personalize it… and then, brood, sulk, worry, feel angry or dejected… Yes, all because of our distorted thinking of personalisation… As if the world has no other job but to keep talking about us all day long! “This kind of thinking stems from one’s low self-esteem,” Shri Ram Mohan told the young-ones, yesterday, “It comes from constant comparison… and not having enough confidence in oneself.” Then, he told the class a story, which made everyone chuckle… “I had just joined the ashram to learn Vedanta under my teacher, Swami Dayananda Saraswati. One day, our teacher told i...