Gerald D'Cunha

  “Nothing vast enters the life of mortals without a curse.” Sophocles   M ahima*, my eleventh-standard student, has been very particular about her commitment to my Zoom sessions. Also, she has been very particular about doing her homework. Ditto, I learnt, has been her commitment to her college and other tutors. So, last afternoon, when she did not connect on Zoom, I and some of her fellow students kept calling and messaging her – ‘What happened’? … ‘The session has started’… ‘We are waiting’… ‘Please join’…!” But, the messages were left unread and the calls were left unattended. Knowing her well, I concluded, that she must be really unwell. Thus, we continued with the session without Mahima. This morning, there was a short e-mail from Mahima: “Good Morning Sir, I hope, you are doing well. I couldn’t attend any class yesterday; or, even for that matter, I couldn’t use any device, as it has a screen. I was having a severe headache and doctor told me to take res...

A bout a month ago, a parent came to talk to me about his 15-year-old son. Boy’s name was Raju Mane*. The parent had shown up in his work-clothes… He worked under a civil contractor as a painter on daily wages… his clothes had patches of paint all over. He seemed very disturbed. His son, who studied in a local Marathi-medium school, had miserably failed in 9 th standard. On someone’s suggestion, the father had decided to make his son appear privately the tenth-standard exams. However, he was a worried man. “Sir, my son is an intelligent boy,” he said, “Wrong company has spoiled him.” A dear friend of mine, who taught high-school students, had suggested Raju’s father to see me. Obviously, my friend wanted me to help the young boy realize the root cause… help him improve his self-esteem… make him feel he was a good soul and had to discover himself… that, he could bounce back, if he took hold of himself… The boy seemed willing to come to me… So, I took him into...

Pic.: Azriel D'Souza I t's more than a week now, and I haven't published a single post on my blog. That's something unusual; for, I love writing... It is my deep need... that, I should express every day. Yes, it makes me feel extremely happy, centered and healed, too. Fair enough.  But, how much of that need to write and express every day comes from my 'ego'? How much of that comes from my obsessive-compulsory behavior... yes, 'disorder'? The OCD, they call it in psychology. In fact, someone asked me yesterday, "How do you feel when you have not written a single post for over a week now?" He was my close friend and he knew how much happy blogging and writing would make me... When smokers stop smoking and drinkers stop drinking, they experience some withdrawal symptoms. When people like me – those who aren’t used to fasting, who love to eat well – suddenly decide to fast, yes, certainly, we will experien...