Gerald D'Cunha

  “You never have to change anything you got up in the middle of the night to write.” Saul Bellow   L ast morning, my very trusted friend, and a fellow-trainer, Dr. Deepak, had shared a beautiful poem titled ‘The Will of Amrita Pritam’. It was so beautiful, that it had inspired me to write my yesterday’s Blog – ‘The Language of the Heart’. This morning, my trusted friend sounded a bit concerned… He shared another post which claimed, that the poem attributed to the revered poet from Punjab was a ‘FAKE’ one! Now, what would I do? I wrote this reply to my friend: “As desired in the Will (Kisi ka bhi ho), our ‘Lies, Greed, Envy, Selfishness… all have gone into the funeral pyre. Let’s not lose our sleep over it, dear Deepak. I wrote that piece from my heart. There ends the story. Thanks for the sincere concern. Love.” J esus Christ did not write the Gospels... Mathew, Mark, Luke and John did. These four men are telling us Jesus’ life story using His own words. Now...

  “Don’t leave a piece of jewelry at his house so you can go back and get it later; he may be with his real girlfriend.”   Amy Sedaris I n life, we learn some lessons the hard way. One of them is not to offer advice to any one – even our nearest and dearest ones – unless the advice is asked for. Did I say ‘even our nearest and dearest ones’? Yes, I did say. Let me be specific, here. Let’s look around us and see how some of our nearest and dearest ones blindly believe in fake news - divisive, communal, toxic and defamatory news, which is dished out, incessantly, through both mainstream and social media. When we see these dear ones of ours so addicted to this, what do we do? Initially, we try to tell them, “Honey, that’s fake news… That’s harmful… Stay away from it.” From where does our advice come? “From our concern, obviously,” we may think. But, do the other person/s think so? Chances are more, that our ‘out-of-concern advice’ may simply boomerang on us…...

  “Believe half of what you see and nothing you read online.” Pablo Reyes N ow a days, it’s senseless to say, that we don’t watch TV news. The TV news has come inside our mobile screens. So, wittingly or unwittingly, we consume it in, like – yes, drugs.   It’s pointless to blame the media for its greed… We need to blame ourselves for our own greed… What else explains our obsession with the lives of SSR, Rhea or Kangana? By default, if I get into even two minutes of watching news about these people - on any channel, my head feels the spin and my heart behaves abnormally… And, I am 62… I am decently educated, informed, well-read and spiritual… I like to stay away from gossip and toxicity… And, despite these proud credentials of mine, if my head spins and my heart behaves abnormally, after consuming just two-minutes of TV news, via my mobile phone or laptop, imagine the state of those who are glued to it in their drawing rooms or bed rooms 24 x 7! Imagine the impact...

I loved what our Chief Minister, Uddhav Thackeray, said in his message, yesterday. In his composed tone, he advised the citizens of his state, Maharashtra – and, particularly of this mega city of Mumbai – to focus on what we could do, in a positive manner, from inside our doors. For, that’s within our control. What’s outside our doors was outside our control… Yes, we all are concerned about the situation outside, today…   We all are anxious, worried and scared. Yes, we all are… and, it’s understandable. But, let’s be a little rational and ask: “Do we have control on things outside our doors? Can we really control them?” If not – and, it is not – why do we spend so much time and energy focusing on such things? Are we not losing our own power apart from our sleep? Are we not ruining others’ sleep and diminishing their power as well? Stephen covey illustrated this phenomenon through two circles. He named the inner circle as the circle ...

"Fear is the lengthened shadow of ignorance.” — Arnold Glasow S ome forty years ago, when I came to this one-of-a-kind city, Bombay – now Mumbai - my uncle and aunt (dad’s younger brother and his wife) were kind enough to accommodate me in their small house for seven long years. I lived with them as their own son. I learnt to be more responsible, disciplined, and, above all, more adjustable while I lived with them. I loved my aunt’s funny one-liners. One of them was my favorite: ‘ Su endare sukrunde’ … Translated from Kannada, it meant: Su means Sukurunde! Well, ‘sukrunde’ is the name of a local (Mangalorean) sweet-laddo. So, just a ‘su’ is enough for a gossip-monger or a rumour-monger to make a nice ‘sukrunde’… It was her pet one-liner, which she used every time she would hear someone around her spinning baseless stories – gossip and rumour (Today’s ‘fake news’, which, in our local Tulu, we called ‘ Ge Suddhi’ ) - my aunt had her one...

“How can people trust the harvest unless they see it sown?” -      Anonymous T oday is Class 12 (CBSE) Accountancy Board exam. A while ago, I received a phone call from my student, Utsav… “Sir, I am going for my exam!” That’s all… The rest was implied! I had taught Utsav, both, in his Class 11 and 12. He is a very intelligent and well-informed kid, very articulate and strong-headed. He had a good hold on the Accountancy concepts and I had no complaints about him at all. So, every time, his school teachers would nag him or his parents about his inefficiencies, I would try to keep up his morale… His mother, particularly, was very stressed about his exams. I had tried my best to keep up her morale, too… So, today, when Utsav called me up and said, “Sir, I am going for my exam,” I knew what more he wanted to say… “Sir, I have done my best… I am leaving to God the rest… Pray for me, wish me well…” Which, obviously, I did… ...

“O pinions are the cheapest commodities in the world,” I had come across this line in a book when I was a new-comer in Mumbai (Bombay) and struggling to get a foot-hold here. The context was: what I wanted to do in life and what others thought I was capable of doing. The book I was reading was ‘Think and Grow Rich’ by Napoleon Hill… “ Whatever  the mind of  man can conceive and believe , it  can  achieve. ” I needed to hear this message desperately at that time; because, I was so full of self-doubts… and so full of low-confidence. In such a state, one was so susceptible to external voices: “No, you can’t do it… Give up.” So, the advice of Napoleon Hill had come just in time. I quickly realized, that others’ opinion – no matter who those people are – was only their opinion… It’s their truth, their belief and their story. Not mine. I became almost immune to such gloomy, defeating prophecies… I began to focus on what was important and dear to m...