Gerald D'Cunha

  “Someone please tell us what is important, because we no longer know.” Richard Ford   A friend of mine, who is well-read and articulate, had been sending me posts highly critical of Mamta Banerjee and her TMC, Rahul Gandhi and his Congress and both the Communist parties… He being my friend, and knowing how thick his skin was, I had only two ways to tell him, “ Dost , not interested.” One, block him immediately. Two, make an attempt to change his ways… The first would have saved my time. But, I wanted to save our friendship. So, I told him this: “Hi Mitesh*, hope, all is well at your end… Jobs, studies, health are all safe. I went through the posts you have been sharing. But, honestly, with whatever little politics I played in my life, I had to lose a kidney to cancer… battle for each breath with Pulmonary Embolism. There is this silent fear inside me, that with all these co-morbidities, Covid can kill me anytime. God gave me a second chance, and, I really don’...

“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 ...