Gerald D'Cunha

  “Kindness is a language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see.” Mark Twain   I have come across two kinds of balloon sellers. The first kind are men with little babies in their  hands. This kind would keep pestering you to buy a balloon or two from them crying, “Saab, bachha ne khana nahin kaya.” Invariably, we would find this kind when our family is just walking out of a restaurant after dinner… It's a disturbing sight… Your family has had a sumptuous dinner, and here is the balloon seller weeping, that his little one is going to sleep hungry at night. “He is a habitual beggar; ignore him,” one side of me prompts me. But, then, I pull out a note of twenty or fifty, give him and walk away for my own guilt-free heart. The second kind are mostly little kids – around the age of 10 to 12 or something like that. I have met them selling balloons, key chains, tissue papers etc., and, yes, mostly while coming out of a mall, an ice-cream parlor or a restaurant. These

  “There is a world of practical religion in simply being considerate of others.” Roger Babson   W hen we are solely concerned about our own happiness and success, we become not only blind and deaf, we also become dumb… heartless, stones. I remember one such incident when I had become one… It was 1991 early January month. I was 33, young and unmarried. Sorry, I was married to ‘The Dawn Club’ which I had founded just two years before that. I was obsessed with what I was doing in its name. So, a grand entertainment programme, including several dances, a fashion show and an elaborate orchestra was being staged in an open-air ground. The ground was allotted to us by the top-boss of a government organization, whose wife was the chief guest of the day… The music was too, too loud, but the packed ground was having a gala time. Touching the boundary of that ground was the hospital run by the organization… There were several patients inside. The security men came several times to remi

  “Plant the seed of desire in your mind and it forms a nucleus with power to attract to itself  everything needed for its fulfilment .” Robert Collier   S ome years ago, when I was chatting with a friend of mine, I found myself corrected by her. “We shouldn’t call them ‘maid servants’, they are our life-supports.” I had, casually, referred the lady who came to do sweeping and mopping at our place as our ‘maid servant’, even though I hadn’t meant to demean her in any way. But, when my friend tried to correct me, I really paused to see the depth of that term she had just toyed – ‘Life-support’. For last few months, we have a new ‘life-support’ at our residence. This woman – probably in her early forties – is so full of enthusiasm, so full of ‘Go-the-extra-mile attitude’, that, both my wife and I like her when she is around… She seems a part of our household. My wife and I both were unanimous about giving her the Diwali bonus, irrespective of the usual haggling over whether s