Gerald D'Cunha

“If you really want to do something, you’ll find a way. If you don’t, you’ll find an excuse.” Jim Rohn   W ho wants long sermons early in the mornings? I am asking this: Do you think, that any college kid – a teenager – has the inclination or patience to listen to a teacher’s ‘sermons’ in the early mornings? Well, the ‘early mornings’ may be 8 or 9 or 10, you see… At the end of my 9 a.m. class today, I heard myself telling this class-12 group… “Don’t worry. You may have to bear with my ‘sermons’ for a month more, maximum. You will be free after that… ‘Chutkara’ , once and for all!” Of course, my tongue was firmly tucked inside my cheeks as I was telling them what I was telling. I knew, that it was their age to resist… find a teacher’s sermons ‘boring’ and ‘repetitive’. But, I also knew, that the time to recall these sermons –   appreciate them, and value them – would, always, come later in life… It came later in my own life, and, it would come later for my young st...

In the Sanjay Bansali movie, ‘Black’, there is this scene. Michelle (Rani Mukerjee), the blind, deaf and dumb student of Debhraj Sahai (Amitabh Bachchan) has just shown some arrogance and disrespect. She has thrown away her books and is stubbornly refusing to repent. Her eccentric teacher doesn’t wait even for a second to beat her blue. She is dragged to the typewriter, and there she is, rage personified. Then, she starts typing the brail… Till then, Michelle couldn’t go beyond even twenty words per minute. Now, angry, mad, hell-bent, she goes about hammering the keyboard and when the watch stops, the teacher is astonished. “Fifty words per minute,” he exclaims as his student has vented out all her anger and sorrow on the keys of her typewriter. She is calmed down; she is ready to listen, repent for her actions. The teacher holds his student and begins to go out, telling her beholding mother, “It is time for celebration; time for an ice cream.” The mother asks with a pleasant confusion...