Gerald D'Cunha

  “It’s always the ones who know the least about you  who judge you the most.” Anonymous   T here seems to be an unexplainable thrill in gossiping about other people’s lives… I mean, their private lives. It’s a strange thrill, as if like an orgasm… Sorry for being a bit colourful, here! In one of our High School lessons, we had an interesting lesson… It was one of the essays of A. G. Gardiner… It’s titled ‘On Keyhole Morals’. It dealt with our innate and insatiable curiosity to know what is happening in other people’s private lives… Yes, to see it, secretly, through the keyholes of their rooms! And, right since my childhood days, I would hear the Priests in church trying to drill into our little skulls what Jesus had said, “Why do you look at the speck in your brother’s eyes, but fail to see a log in your own?” … “You hypocrites!” We still assume, that Jesus called the Pharisees of His time with that blunt expression… We think, hypocrites live no longer, today...

  “ No man can be called friendless   who has God and companionship of good books.” Elizabeth Barrett Browning   “T he sight of a book excites me.” I have heard this from many people. The sight of a book excites me, too. If I see a bookshelf, I pause… Pick a book, feel it, smell it… flip through it… Get fascinated by its design… Read the synopsis on back cover or the flap… Quickly read a portion of the foreword or introduction… And, quite often, find myself transported to a faraway Harry Potter’s land! Books are magical… They can fire our imagination! But, it wasn’t so for me, when I was growing up. I hardly read books, leave alone writing them. As I keep saying, as a young boy, I had a nagging inferiority-complex… A constant feeling of worthlessness had held me back from expressing myself in any manner – be it in studies or any extra-curricular activities. Sometime in my twelfth standard, thanks to fine English teachers (who taught us Shakespeare and other li...

  I am just asking this: If a fish takes a break from swimming for a few months, will she forget how to swim when she resumes swimming again? Similarly, if an eagle takes a similar break from flying, will he forget how to fly when he resumes flying again? Today, I am set to resume blogging after a gap of over four   months? And, I am just asking the same question: Will I forget how to write my daily, simple stories? The question makes me smile more than think! Just because I did not write my stories for over four months, it did not mean, that I did not weave those stories in my imagination. Writing is just one of the ways in which I am able to tell the stories that are born in my mind. There are many other ways… Silence is one of them! A few days ago, my favourite actor Will Smith walked up to the glittering stage of Oscars ceremony and slapped hard the host, the comedian, Chris Rock. Chris Rock had cracked a distasteful joke on Will Smith’s wife, Jada Pinkett (who s...

  “We are very good lawyers for our own mistakes, but very good judges for mistakes of others.” Anonymous     S ome days ago, while I was in my hometown, one of our relatives sent a personal WhatsApp message to me. The message contained only six simple words. Incidentally, when the message arrived, there were six of us in the room. When I first read the message, I derived a certain meaning out of it. I read it again and derived a different meaning… I read it a couple of times more, and, each time, the meaning I was deriving kept changing. I was curious, if others around me would get a similar experience… Every one’s interpretation was different, every time they read it! I thought in my mind, that the proverbial elephant had come to our room… and we were the six blind men trying to touch a part of the elephant and arrive at our own conclusions: Elephant was like a rope… Like a wall… Like a tree-trunk… Like a fan and so on. There had to be a wise man to tell the...

  “We see truth through the eyes of our biases.” Charles F. Glassman   O ne of the most liberating feelings comes in me when I honestly see my own biases. I have many unconscious layers of biases… I may try to hide this fact from the eyes of others; often, camouflaging through my justifications and, even, arrogance. But, I cannot hide it from my own conscience… I know when, where and how I am biased. It’s only, that I am not honest enough to accept this fact. So, what I tend to look for in other people is ‘company’…   alikeness. Yes, like-minded people make a great company. But, if I surround myself with people who are similarly biased as I am, what kind of community it is going to be? Frank A. Clark reminds us: “We find comfort among people who agree with us, growth among those who don’t.” Our biases shunt our growth, Sir. Yes, they do! Let’s take, for example, the news and videos we tend to watch.   What kind   of   stories are those? Simple: ...

  “Rational behaviour requires theory; reactive behaviour requires only reflex action.” W. Edwards Deming   N o matter how hard I try not to judge people – and their behaviour – the fact is: I do! Now, by ‘judging people’s behaviour’ – I do not mean any unusual behaviour. I try to read too much, often unnecessarily, into the usual – commonplace – behaviour of others, even. I think, it has a lot to do with my childhood insecurities. For, I see myself slipping into that victim mode easily… It’s only when I allow that moment to ‘be’… and see my own behaviour with a little more kindness - and neither with justification nor with condemnation – that, I am able to smile at the situation… “So, it’s not about other person’s behaviour,” I end up reminding myself, “It’s about my own: how I react to theirs!” As I said, I am talking about the simple, commonplace situations. Like these… I have known this young parent for many years. Once, I was his teacher. Now, his own son...

“ Acknowledging the good that you already have in your life is the foundation for all abundance.”   ―  Eckhart Tolle ,  A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose W e need to know not only how to give, we also need to know how to receive. Both have to come from a clean space in our hearts. I think, we have undermined the significance of the attitude involved with receiving. A married young woman had come to visit her mother late last evening. When she saw me inside my office, she opened the door. “Hello sir, Merry Christmas,” she said as she came inside. I was delighted to see this woman after a long time. As I was talking to her, I handed to her two of my books and said warmly, “This is for you… You will love them.” “Thank you so much sir,” the woman said excitedly looking at the books she had just received, “I love your writings… They are so simple yet so good.” “I am glad to hear that,” I said, obviously fe...

Y ears ago, there were these two popular books - ‘How to Read a Person Like a Book’ (by Gerard Nierenberg) and ‘Body Language’ by Allan and Barbara Pease. It was the time when people – particularly youngsters – were obsessed with reading about their Horoscopes… Linda Goodman’s books – ‘Sun Signs’, ‘Star Signs’ and ‘Love Signs’ were a rage during this time. This was also the time, when people – yes, particularly youngsters – were found obsessed with reading about the Body Language… right from the way you used your hands to the way you sat, walked, slept and even blinked or frowned – yes, everything about your body was supposed to mean something, say something. A few decades later, today, I do not see many people hooked on to these kinds of subjects the way they did once… Linda Goodman, Gerard Nierenberg, Allan and Barbara seem to be authors of another time... This is New Age… People seem to be obsessed with new stuff! But, I still tell young ones, who come to me...

L ong before I started blogging, I had been writing down my daily Notes in dairies… I used to write them down along with the date and I continued to do it for years and years. So, I have them written down in scores of dairies! And, what did I write in them? That’s interesting! My problems, my anxieties, my anger, my jealousy, my fears, my longings and frustrations, my hopes and despair, my resolves and my cowardice… Well, I learnt early not to disown anything in life… If they were my feelings, then, I had to capture them as they were – and as much as possible to be honest about them… That experience had been very therapeutic, very healing and empowering… Incidentally, whenever someone read them, they would exclaim, “So beautiful… So reassuring!” Blogging happened some ten years ago… and, what I did in my dairies; I did, now, on my PC… But, Notes remained Notes… My feelings remained my feelings… My objective remained the same old one: to help me heal myself! ...