Gerald D'Cunha

  “Monsters are real, and ghosts are real, too; they live inside us… And, sometimes, they win.” Stephen King   T ill this date, I do not know what a ‘Halloween Day’ is all about. While growing up, back home, we would hear about something called ‘All Souls’ Day’. On this day, we went to church, visited graveyard and prayed for the souls of every near, dear and far-off departed ones… That’s all I remember doing as a child… That’s about it. And, here, in this big city, and, particularly after the exposure to social media and YouTube, I started hearing about this fancy-dress event called ‘Halloween’. Interestingly, not only little kids took part in this fancy-dress event, the young and the old alike, the schooled and the unschooled alike – yes all of them dressed in these crazy, scary, weird costumes with the hope, that they could entertain the world around them…  make them  happy and scared. Whatever one hopes to do, like every other festival in this world...

  “Afternoon knows what the morning never suspected.” Robert Frost   T he morning, soon, becomes the afternoon, you see! We grow old… It’s afternoon, now… What the morning suspected, yes, the afternoon knows… That’s something so beautiful about Life… With age, we mature like good wine… That’s something so beautiful about Life, too! So, when I complete 64 tomorrow, how shall I celebrate this milestone? Do I know, that some hours are still left for the celebration, and, anything can happen in those few hours? I think, this tendency of counting our age by the number of years simply drops when we begin to value each blessing in our lives. Rightly, it is said, “Count your age not by the numbers, but by your blessings.” So, I ask myself on the eve of completion of my 64 years on this planet, “Can I start counting, at least, 64 blessings in my Life?” It sounds silly! Like everyone else, I, too, have never bothered to count my blessings. I know, I will get ti...

S ome two months ago, a young man called me and said, “Sir, my 11-year-old cousin will be coming down from Dubai on a two-month vacation. His parents are keen that he should utilize this time in India on learning some new skills… Is there something that you can offer?” I had nothing to offer for a 11-year-old except something that I have been, always, passionate about and, yes, good at. So, I said to the young man, “I can help him open up and express himself from his heart.” A month later, the young man called me up, again, and said, “Sir, my cousin has come… Can we start?” I took off with the 11-year-old Yash. Let me tell you this: Yash is one of the most affectionate, confident, articulate and well-loved-and-raised kids I have come across. It’s clear from the start, that both his parents had poured on this little kid loads of love and care… with great schooling and great thoughts. He had come down to India with his mother, while father had stayed b...