Gerald D'Cunha

“Gold medals aren't really made of gold. They're made of sweat, determination, and a hard-to-find alloy called guts.” - Dan Gable I watched the Hindi movie ‘Poorna’ along with my wife on 24 th of this month. It was my wife’s  50 th birthday. It was, also, one of her happiest! Both, my wife and I, loved the movie a lot… After coming home, my wife posted on her friends’ group:  “POORNA… A very inspiring movie!” Just the way great Sachin Tendukar is… 24 th April is his birthday, too! I remember an inspiring quote from the Legend: “Don't stop chasing your dreams, because dreams do come true.” Till my friend, Vivek, told me about this movie, ‘Poorna’ - just two days earlier that was - I hadn’t heard about it. How ironical, how sad! “Watch it; it is very motivating for multiple reasons,” my friend had told me. It was only after watching the movie that I gathered what the ‘multiple reasons’ were… THE FIRST REASON: Obviousl...

Pic.: Anima D'Cunha Y ears ago, when I had decided to do something about my poor English, one of the things I did – and found very effective – was telling a nice story in two tenses… the Present and the Past. Over the years, I have helped hundreds of people, who were earnest about improving their English, with the same method… Yes, write a nice story down in both the tenses… and, then, tell it to someone! Presently, I am helping a young businessman by the name Pravin Pahuja. “Just twenty stories, Pravin,” I have told him, “You write down just twenty nice stories in two tenses… and, then, narrate them to someone in the same way… Your English will fall in place and, along with it, you will become an effective communicator, too.” Pravin has already written some… This is one of them… PAST: In a village, the fishermen had just returned after their daily catch. As they were sorting out the fishes, a kite swooped down, picked a fish by its beak and shot up int...

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...

Just read this Good-Morning message shared by my FB friend, Ajit Nair, today: “Half of our sorrows we earn by expecting good things from wrong people; And other half we earn by detecting wrong things in good people.” Nothing can be truer than this! Often, we hear people advising us: “Don’t keep expectations; you will only end up disappointed and in sorrow.” But, if you start your day with this paradigm – not to expect anything from anyone at anytime and anywhere – let me tell you, we will end up with even more frustration, and despair! It is naive to believe that we can live in this world without keeping any expectations from people around us. It is ignorance. So, the message I received from Ajit, this morning, had provided the right perspective: Don’t expect ‘good things’ from ‘wrong people’… Half of your sorrow will end! Stop digging for ‘wrong things’ in ‘good people’… The other half of your misery will go! The fact is t...

It seems, we, as a nation, have pinned all our hopes on Kasab. Our hope is: If and when Kasab is hanged, all our problems would end. The terrorism included! "Why do you take so much time to hang him?" a young man asked. "Do we need any more evidence to prove the magnitude of his crime?" "We can not do that in a democracy like ours," replied the other man. "A court has to sentence him after a fair trial." "Fair trial?" the young man shouted. "You mean, fair trial for a monster like him?" "Well, that's the greatness - or weakness - of a democracy." the other man said. "Every human being is entitled to defend himself." "But, he is not a 'human being'; he is a heartless monster," protested the young man. "He needs to be treated the way they treat such savages in those Islamic countries: Gun down publicly; finish them ... Put an end to the story." "Yes, that would finish a me...