Gerald D'Cunha

  “You can only understand people if you feel them in yourself.” John Steinbeck   E mpathy, it is said, is not a noun, it’s a verb... It’s a word in action. As a teacher of college students, I tend to get impatient quickly... When students struggle to answer, yes, I tend to forget, that I, too, struggled to answer once; often, I was worse than how I find my students now... Ditto is the case when it comes to parenting. Do you and I expect too much and too fast – and too good – from our young children. And, how cooly we forget, that we didn’t live at all up to our parents’ expectations! And, yes, the same impatience is very, very visible at work place, even. When we be come bosses, we forget our days as beginners... Days as novice, filled with many mistakes... It’s often said, that employees don’t quit their companies; they quit their bad bosses – the ones who lack empathy, if I were to paraphrase that... W hen I migrated to Mumbai in October, 1979, I had carri...

I admire the team that is making the upcoming Hindi movie, ‘Sanju’, a biopic on Sanjay Dutt. The life of Sanjay Dutt has everything in it – the good, the bad and the ugly. Some of the choices he made, at various points of his life, had proved to him very costly and he had to pay a heavy price for those mistakes. The suffering in his life – be it his mother’s or first wife’s cancer – were beyond his control. But, through all of them, including his jail terms, Sanjay had been a graceful human being. Like many around me, I have known him only from what I have read about him or seen about him. But, I have, always, admired him for the way he had dealt with the consequences of his choices, and moved on in life… I seriously feel: If Sanjay Dutt knew, that he was making some wrong choices, he would not have made them. Now, the question: Did he really not know, that he was making some wrong choices – like doing drugs or possession of AK-47? My answer is a philosophical on...

Pic.: Uttam Ghosh “Even in the midst of the storm the sun is still shining.”   ―   Dayna Lovely I t is not easy for us to admit our mistakes. If we are public figures, it is even more so… very, very tough. That’s why, of all the character strengths, I have, always, held that this strength – the ability to accept one’s mistakes and to be ready to do amends – as the greatest one. Presently, a dear-old-friend of mine is going through a life-churning process. He is 50. When young, his sole aim had been to reach ‘the top’ in corporate world. So, consumed by this burning desire, he worked round the clock… ignoring what his young wife and little daughter really wanted from him. He worked hard, almost killing him… to give them the best material comforts - a great house, chauffeur-driven car, the best school for the daughter and goodies for his wife… Yes, he gave them everything except the emotional closeness when they badly needed it… And,...