Gerald D'Cunha

T he phrase ‘Gadha mazdoori’ has a ring around it! I use it several times in a day to tell my students, “ Dekh beta , if you think, that hard work alone brings success, the donkey would have been crowned as an Icon long time ago!” “Stop doing the donkey work,” I hammer them, “Do smart work.” And, whenever I find a young one self-pitying with the thought, “I work very hard,” I shake him hard and yell, “ Bachha , you work hardly!” But, no. The Bachha still loves to believe, that he works very, very hard! A couple of days ago, in one of my sessions, I reminded my bachhas about what Einstein had said:   “Success is one percent perspiration and ninety-nine percent inspiration.” Not a soul tried to correct me! So, I hope, they went home with this ooltah theory of Einstein: that, to be successful, their work needed to be an inspired work, and not just hard work… I had, also, reminded them about what Abraham Lincoln had said referring to...

Pic.: Pradeep Nanda “If Jesus were here today, he wouldn't be riding around on a donkey. He'd be taking a plane, he'd be using the media.” Joel Osteen T oday, I was teaching my twelfth-standard students, in my early morning batch (HSC Board). Unlike the ISC-Board students, the HSC-Board students are not allowed to use calculators. So, today’s kids you see… They are so used to machines and gadgets for quick results; their mind is simply not willing to buy the idea that they have to use it… to become sharp and smart. When I was like them, calculators were seen as a luxury. I rarely saw anyone using them even in offices, leave alone in schools and colleges. So, we had to use our mind… think in order to add, subtract, multiply and divide. For a Commerce student, it was deemed to be a basic skill which had to be honed. Our teachers taught us various simple and short-cut methods to do complicated arithmetic. For example, if we had to div...

One of my favorite reminders to my students is, “Don’t do donkey work – the gadha mazdoori.” Well, they are so used to hearing it from me, that they know exactly when I would be coming out with it in the midst of my teaching – or preaching. “Do smart work; not donkey work, okay?” That’s what I want to remind them, “I want efficiency, you understand?” The interesting thing is that, I am so used to reminding my students about the need for efficient work, the smart work… so much so that they have almost become immune to my reminders… Lo! There they come, once again, with their donkey-work… And, there I go, once again, with my broken gramophone! Then, I smile, nod my head thinking about my own donkey-work sermons, thinking how inefficient they are in making the desired impact on my students… and, I realize it is time, I did some ‘smart work’ in this respect… Yes, invariably, when the donkey-work drops from my sermons, the donkey-work d...