Gerald D'Cunha

  “All human miseries derive from not being able to sit quiet in a room alone.” Blaise Pascal   S ome days’ ago, I had attended the wedding nuptials of my nephew, Wendel in one of the churches is Thane. The bride, Olivia, looked beautiful in her wedding gown. My wife, having undergone two angioplasties lately, had opted to bless the young couple from home... Thus, I sat alone among several guests and witnessed the solemn event... You see, in today’s hi-tech and social media world, we get to see several guests busy clicking pictures of everything that unfolds, both at the nuptials as well as the reception venue. The work done by the official photographers and videographers may take days and weeks to reach us. But, the pictures and videos captured by these guests do reach wide and far instantly – mostly in family groups... I am bad in clicking pictures. I, also, have this bad habit of involving in what is going on at present... One such moment, at the nuptials, has a...

    “Some say the world will end in fire; some say in ice.” Robert Frost C an we, humans, ever be free from forming opinions about people and events around us - about anything and everything, whether they are happening right next to us or oceans afar, or whether they are about living or dead beings? I don’t think, we are that evolved to be free from such a temptation… It seems, we get instinctively tuned into it. Yes, an opinion is something the human mind instinctively forms… Maybe, it must’ve come in us due to the ‘original sin’… So, blame it on Adam and his wife, Eve… It’s all because of the sin they committed, the original sin – that irresistible temptation… Sounds nice… We are born with this temptation called ‘opinions’… But, then, I wonder: Despite a thousand opinions popping up inside our heads, can we be discreet when it comes to voicing them out – yes, loud in the open? Mercifully, we can… We are bestowed with that freedom of choice… That, we needn’t b...

  “Kaise kaise ko diya hai… Aise vaiso ko diya hai Mujh ko bhi toh lift karade… Thodi si toh lift karade” From Adnan Sami’s song, ‘Lift Karade’   W ell, I do not know about you. But, the only times I heard or used the word ‘Viral’ was when there was an ordinary fever – the fever in the air, caused by some ordinary virus. For major fevers like Malaria, Typhoid etc., one never used that term… That was before the internet boom… Before FB, Instagram, YouTube and the like came up to spread this digital virus – so fast, so far, that people like me started wondering as Adnan Sami did… “Kaise kaise ko diya hai… Aise vaiso ko diya hai Mujh ko bhi toh lift karade… Thodi si toh lift karade” “Going viral isn’t random, magic or luck… It’s a science,” says Johah Berger. So, in the school/college curriculum, it’s time, they added this new science – ‘Science of going Viral’! Adnan Sami was a visionary writer and singer… Just listen to his lyrics and the song. Remember, he di...

  “Learn to sit back and observe. Not everything needs a reaction.” Unknown   I am of the firm opinion, that there is a story in everything I see around me – near or far. So, if I am a creative person – a writer, poet, singer, musician, painter… for that matter, any sensitive person, be it a teacher, preacher or whatever – I can weave a story from every happening around me… But, then, I, also, see this: my stories are hugely influenced by my biases… They are my reactions. The more I let my stories come from my prejudiced mind, the more reactive my mind gets. The social media operates exactly on this susceptibility of my mind… It feeds me according to my taste, my preferences and biased choices. For example, if I dislike Donald Trump, the social media feeds more and more and more fodder to deepen my dislike. Similarly, if I like fried chicken, behold: I   get it till I get bloated! T wo days ago, from nowhere, I chanced upon this beautiful cover of the old c...

“If two people are thinking alike, one of them is not required.” An old saying     T oday, this old saying kept coming back to me… The same message has been conveyed through another saying: “If everyone is thinking alike, no one is thinking at all.” I can’t tell you how often I have come across the above sayings. But, today, they made me pause and reflect… For some time now, I have been strongly feeling irritated with a few of my social-media friends. They have been relentlessly sharing posts – mostly, political or religious – which, in my view, are extreme right… Often, they are provocative. In the past, I have blocked many such friends from my social-media account. So, this time around, too, I have been strongly feeling the prompting to block them… My reasoning is this: “These fellows are not adding any value to my life. On the other hand, they are causing unrest inside me… So, why keep them? – just discard.” But, strangely, this time around, I have not a...

  “Lord, we don’t need another mountain, there are mountains and hillsides enough to climb; there are oceans and rivers enough to cross, enough to last till the end of time.” (From the song ‘What the World Needs now’ written by Hal David and composed by Bart Bacharach)     F or several years, during our Public Speaking sessions, I used to ask young kids to speak on the topic – ‘What Success Means to Me?’. This was before the Google surfaced… and, the idea of AI was out of anybody’s imagination. Well, I say this, because, our young kids had to rely upon their own mind to tell what Success really meant to them… Means, what they thought, not what Google or AI thought. Maybe, some of them sought help from their parents or teachers… That’s about it. But, they all did speak on the topic – ‘What Success Means to Me?’. Now, after several years, these kids are grown-up to be ‘successful’ men and women… They are busy with their lives - family, business, profession o...

  “There is no exercise better for the heart than reaching down and lifting people up.” John Holmes   S unil, who has been printing all our books (for over two decades), is deeply involved with many religious and charity works. They include seva relating to Shirdi pilgrimage, reaching out to poor village kids in schools of interior Maharashtra, serving food on Thursdays at the local Sai mandir or during Ganesh festivities, and so on. Being a printer, he, also, volunteers to do, free of cost, most of the work relating banners, souvenirs and certificates. “This is within my reach, and it gives me a lot of peace,” he says. But, Sunil gets annoyed when people around him start posting pictures and videos of such charity work on social media. “I tell them not to make any publicity or show of any seva that we do,” he says, “but, many of them don’t listen.” “Let your left hand not know what your right hand gives,” Jesus had advised. But, that advice seems outdated. Peo...

  “How many likes until you love yourself?” Alvesha Chauhan   I turned 65 on July 24. For a month before that, a group of my well-wishers were passionately coaxing me to start my own YouTube channel. They were strongly convinced, that I could reach out to a larger audience, and make a greater imapct… But, I wasn’t convinced, at all… So, their hope, that I would launch my own YouTube channel on my latest birthday was met with my lack of interest in it, and I ended up disappointing my genuine well-wishers… It was ironical, that when I was seriously contemplating on quitting a large-scale visibility – be it on any social media platform – I was being passionately coaxed by some of my well-wishers to do exactly the opposite. They kept saying: “There is so much you can do… There are so many people out there who you can reach out to… We will help you to expand… etc., etc.” But, I did not want to ‘expand’ outside… I wanted to expand inside! It’s nearly fifteen years si...

  “Your strength doesn’t come from winning. It comes from struggles and hardships. Everything that you go through prepares you for the next level.” Germany Kent   S ome months ago, I was watching Kamiya Jani’s interview on her YouTube channel - ‘Curly Tales’. The man she was interviewing was the Celebrity Chef – Mr. Sanjeev Kapoor. Towards the end, Kamiya asks Mr. Kapoor, what advice he has for the budding chefs. The answer to this question impressed me so much, that I keep talking about it to my young students…      The question: “How can I become a celebrity chef”      The answer: “ You can’t become a celebrity chef…                             You can only create a body of your work                             that becomes worth celebrating.” I have been writing my ‘little th...