Gerald D'Cunha

S elf-importance and Self-respect are different - as different as chalk and cheese. Self-respect is healthy; self-importance is not. I think, all of us have this chalk-and-cheese stuff tucked inside us. If self-respect outweighs self-importance, it’s good for us, as well as for people around us. On the other hand, if our self-importance outweighs our self-respect, it’s bad for all of us. Often, we fail to recognize if a certain behavior of ours stems from our self-respect or self-importance. In that lies a lot of our misery, too… Let me not talk about others. I am nobody – in fact, too mortal a soul – to judge others. I am aware how frequently I throw my weight in my class room… when I use my temper and tantrum, when I am driven by impatience, when I act with intolerance. It, certainly, can’t be coming from my self-respect. It’s coming from my deep sense of insecurity, the area I haven’t still worked on fully; rather, I haven’t completely gotten o...

Pic .: Sherry Haridas T here is a scene in the latest Hollywood movie, 'Captain Phillips'. A gang of Somali pirates have kidnapped Captain Phillips (Tom Hanks) from his cargo ship - MV   Maersk Alabama , and are now heading towards Somalia with the objective of extracting millions of dollars in ransom. There are four heavily-armed pirates, all skinny and young - one of them barefoot and others who look starved and wretched. They have held Captain Phillips as a hostage in a fiber-glassed life-boat and are speeding towards their homeland, where their gang leaders are sheltered…    Abduwali Muse ( Barkhad Abdi ) is the leader of the four-member gang of pirates. He is arrogant, fearless and ruthlessly hell-bent on carrying out his mission. Before the gang abducts Captain Phillips from the vessel, they are offered thirty-thousand-dollars cash, which is there in ship’s safe, and leave the ship and its crew alone. But, Muse has no interest in such a sma...