Gerald D'Cunha

Pic.: Sonia Asrani “Don't fight to be right, but fight when you are right.” Amit Kalantri I can’t expect my fellow-being to follow my religion, or political party... worship my deity or follow my leader… I can’t expect him to eat the food of my liking... dress like I do, read and appreciate what I do… I am civilized and intelligent enough not to expect that from my fellow-being… Ditto when it comes to him: He doesn’t expect me to, either… Yes, live and let live is the guiding principle for our happy co-existence in this world… Now, the trouble brews when I try to demean my fellow-being’s faith, political ideology, food and cultural habits… So long as I keep my affiliations private and do not make an ugly display in public, there is beauty in my relationships… But, once, I start hard-selling my Gods or Leaders in public… that is, the moment I start becoming a propagandist… I lose all my reasoning ability… I begin to behave like a mob…...

Pic.: Ivan Mathias “Just think, if it weren't for marriage, men would go through life thinking they had no faults at all.” -       Author: All wives      This is the Valentine Day month. They say ‘Love is in the air’… “Not love,” said someone to me, last night, “it is ‘smog’ from the Mankhurd dumping-ground.” Perhaps, he was right… When the ‘smog’ gets cleared, we may be able to see ‘Love’ there…. In the air! So much of love, so much of love and so much of love… that most of us have become not only blind, but also fools… Yes, men and women both… Before the marriage, everything looks ‘perfect’… romantic… Once married, nothing seems right, leave alone ‘perfect’… Everything skewed… screwed! “You know, I was a FOOL when I married you,” once, a wife had yelled at her hubby, in frustration…  “Yes darling, you are right,” her hubby had replied, “but, I was in love so much… that ...

A nother lesson we should teach our children, very early in life, is to celebrate our differences… All sorts of differences. In fact, I am wrong here. This lesson we should learn from our little children! For, children are pure… They are unbiased… Division and hatred doesn’t come to them naturally. It is when they see us talking about division – when they see our prejudiced reactions towards people around us, including the ones within our own families – yes, our children pick them up from us. In my last Post, I had focused on our uniqueness… How God has made each one of us unique, special. I had emphasized how powerful that faith of ours in uniqueness could be. I had called it – ‘The Gospel of Faith’! Today, I wish to focus on the other side of this faith: that, as much as I am unique, special, my fellow-being, too, is… That, I should not only believe in the beauty, strength and power of my own uniqueness, I should believe in h...