Gerald D'Cunha

A gentleman shared this wise thought in one of the WhatsApp groups I belong to: “Quarantine the media for 14 days and 80% of our problems will go away.”   Instantly, a dozen fellow-members in the group responded with thumbs-up. Of course, that statement made pure sense. But, then, I wondered: How many things can we quarantine from our life? Every WhatsApp group or other social media group I belong to, is bombarded with forwards, and about 99% of them is utter rubbish! The members who had greeted the statement with instant thumbs-up were the ones who have been blindly forwarding the rubbish stuff, round the clock, and round the year! So, which ‘media’ have we to quarantine for 14 days?   Obviously, the statement is referring to the relentless TV news! But, when we shut the TV, the ‘crap’ still comes from our own li’l mobile screens, you see… Therefore, just as we shut the windows before the night falls, so to keep the mosquitoes away when we go off to sleep...

  “If everything is amplified, we hear nothing.” Jon Stewart H uman mind is wired to take sides! Confused? Imagine you come across a game on TV, social media or even at a local playground… You know nothing about the teams or players… Totally strangers… But, as you keep watching the game, watch you mind, as well… Are you rooting for one of the teams? Can you remain totally neutral? Similarly, imagine this: you are watching two people fighting along the road… Why? Even two bulls, dogs, goats, cats are fighting as you walk by… Is there a favourite out there? And, imagine this: you and I are watching on TV or social media so much of ‘fighting’ – mostly political – and allow ourselves to be affected by what we watch… what happens to our thinking? I don’t know about you. But, whenever I get drawn into this cesspool, I end up getting depressed – irritated, angry and very, very touchy and reactive. The worst part of this is: I am ready to spoil my close relationships for the ...

"You become what you think about  all day long.” Ralf Waldo Emerson N eed I ‘investigate’ into the death of Sushant Singh Rajput? Let me admit at the outset: I have watched two of his beautiful movies – ‘M.S. Dhoni: The Untold Story’ and ‘Chhichhore’ – and, after coming home from the cinema hall, hugely impressed by the movies and Sushant’s acting both, I have written lovely Blogs. I have, also, watched a couple of his interviews, as I, often, watch others’ too; and, yes, I have been impressed by that, too. And, with that – and, maybe, some Magazine articles on him - ends my affection and loyalty to this fine actor. So, when the news broke about his unfortunate death, like so many around me, I, too, was saddened… “Was it a suicide or a foul play?” Yes, this thought, too, was planted into my mind by the insane media. But, here is what I did: I completely insulated my mind from further poisoning on SSR… One death was enough… I did not want the ...

“Gratitude turns what we have into enough.” Anonymous I t’s 5 in the evening as I type these words… It’s dark outside, and it’s pouring in torrents! Somewhere in Assam, China and other places, rivers and lakes have swollen and fiercely swallowing up the villages and towns. And, somewhere the earthquakes have flattened out what Man had built… And, everywhere, there is this dreaded virus, already. Some live as one big family, all together, in this lockdown… and some live alone, all alone. But, apparently, loneliness has nothing to do with the number of people we live with. I am sure, many, many, many may agree with me when I say this: You can live with a dozen people at home, yet feel lost and lonely. On the other hand, you may live all alone in the house, yet feel loved and protected… “Thank God, you are living with your family,” I said this, today, to someone who was endlessly cribbing about something, “Just be thankful.” Thanklessness is man’s worst v...

“There’s a lot of ugly things in this world, son; I wish I could keep ’em all away from you.  T hat’s never possible.” Harper Lee W hen our innocence is lost, our ability to live – enjoy life – is lost. And, I think, to lose or not to lose our innocence is the choice each one of us make, each morning. Let me take this morning as an example to check if we all have a choice in this regard … ‘Vikas Dubey is killed’! That’s a ‘big-breaking news’ right when the Sun was coming out in the East, today. For last one week or so, there was too much news about this man from Kanpur – call him a criminal, a gangster, a terrorist or a friend-of-the-powerful – whatever… yes, that’s irrelevant. What was expected had just happened. I, for one, was not at all affected by the cat-and-mouse or hide-and-seek or chor -police drama… Not a bit when he gunned down the cops, not a bit when the cops gunned him and his men down. I could sense, quite clearly, that the moment I ...

“Bad news travels fast. Good news takes the scenic route.” Doug Larson I nterestingly, many young boys and girls tell me, that they love horror films, and, they like to watch them late in the night. “Are you able to sleep after that?” I ask them. “Very well,” they say. One of my ‘nighttime problems’ is this: If I take any bad news to bed, I am not able to sleep. So, leave alone the horror films, I avoid watching the gory TV news and toxic debates at night… It leaves me disturbed. Another problem, in my case, is, that if a sudden phone call or something like that wakes me up from my sleep, I find it difficult to catch it back. So fragile my night ecosystem is! Last night, a mild beep on my phone broke my sleep. It was around 12.45. A relative of mine, had just sent to me this video on the ‘shocking’ incident at Mumbai’s Sion hospital (Wrapped dead bodies were kept along a Covid patient's bed). I had come across this news earlier ...

M y wife and I wanted to watch ‘Sanju’ and we did it on the very first day! We are happy we did it! It’s perfectly fine, if someone, who loves our county more than we both do, call my wife and me as ‘Desh Drohis’… Because, to them Sanjay Dutt was a ‘Desh Drohi’, a ‘Terrorist’, a ‘hard core criminal’, a 'shameless womanizer', a 'dirty drug addict'… Add more, if I have left out anything, please… The day we watched ‘Sanju’, it was a full house. And, who had filled the house? Such lovely people – grandparents and young boys and girls, couple from decent families… and, I did not see a single soul going home ‘cursing’ Sanjay Dutt, Ranbir Kapoor, Rajkumar Hirani, Vidhu Vinod Chopra,  Paresh Rawal or anyone… And, I don’t believe, that any one of them will love our country less now just because they made or watched ‘Sanju’… I haven’t met Sanjay Dutt or his father, Sunil Dutt. I have never been a great fan of both except for Munna bhai ...

Y esterday was a Sunday. I was surprised to read on the front-page of TOI the ‘major national-news’: ‘KARAN JOHAR FATHERS TWINS, A BOY AND A GIRL’ VIA SURROGACY’. I don’t have yesterday’s TOI, here in my office... So, what you see above may not be the exact words… but, that was the exact news according to our national ‘leading –newspaper’… the front-page news… occupying so much space! I felt sorry for the kind of curiosity we guys have fed the media with and allowed it to thrive on… That’s the kind of news that sells… brings TRPs. When I pointed it to someone, last morning, he sounded cool: “If you don’t like, it,” he quipped, “don’t read it.” The message hidden was: “But, don’t crib about it’! I am happy for Karan Johar. “Congratulations, bro!” But, I still can’t understand why TOI – the only newspaper I have been reading every morning for close to four decades – made a front-page national-news out of it! The same gentleman, who shut my mou...

Pic.: Pradeep Nanda M y good friend, Manjeet, loves to say this: “We are a copy-paste-and-send generation… We have lost our thinking ability.” Obviously, Manjeet is amused by the way we blindly, mechanically… dumbly… forward whatever stories – the crap – that  comes to us… The maximum effort we might take is to copy, paste and send! It is so easy to fall prey to this epidemic… that, I have taken me off the WhatsApp and every group on my phone… At home, the TV is off for months now… The only reason I am on FB is for my daily blog. Else, it is an utter dumb-thing to be spending our hours and hours on… Manjeet is off even FB. Dr. Kalam was truly a great soul. But, the posts that we were getting to read – in the pretext of inspiration - so many of them were just dumb forwards, unexamined. Like the one which said: “For the first time in history, the American flag was brought half-mast atop the White House to honor Dr. Kalam.” I got it on FB from an over-enthus...