Gerald D'Cunha

  “I am more worried about being a good person than being the best football player in the world.” Lionel Messi   Y ou see, in my life, I haven’t played any sport, either outdoor or indoor. Basically, it was due to my excessive shy nature and low self-esteem in my growing-up years. I began to get hold my myself much later in life... Yes, I bloomed late in my life. By ‘blooming’, I mean becoming fairly successful in your chosen field. If teaching, writing, training, mentoring are what my ‘fields’ are, yes, I had begun to bloom in these fields – in these gardens – only after I crossed my teenage years. Thus, I was simply bad at sports, elocution, acting, singing and many such conventional fields. Later in my life, I developed interest in sports, music etc. But, my interest was confined to watching some select sports, listening to some select music – I never attempted to play, sing, act etc. Like most around me, I, too, began to idolize some heroes from the fields o...

  “Popularity is a bubble. It’s a mountain: you can go up really hard, but walk down really fast.” Marlon Brando   I think, the hunger for popularity is one of the greatest drives in a human being, particularly when one is young. Often, it causes tremendous amount of restlessness in humans… even desperation. Well, we all are humans. Hence, we all are familiar with that hunger… that, driving force in our bosoms… We want to be there where stars reign… How inviting that place is… How addictive! I once heard, Oprah Winfrey defining popularity in one of her shows: “It simply means many people know you.” “That’s all?” I remember reacting to this definition… Imagine how we desire more and more and more people to know us! The only question this desire brings along is this: ‘Many’ means how many? Jesus Christ had only twelve disciples when He was alive and going around preaching in and around his village. Today, I am told, that more than two-third of this world’s popul...

Pic.: Shankar Ramachndran “From fanaticism to barbarism is only one step.”   ―  Denis Diderot M y dad was a massive fan of Indira Gandhi. Rather, he was a fanatic – an Indira Gandhi fanatic! I remember those eerie days of Emergency (1975-77)… I was a college boy. The only source of information - national or international news – was the daily newspaper and, perhaps, the radio. My dad got it from the local Kannada daily and his friends, who huddled up, late every evening near our local naka . The whole village, most of our relatives and all my dad’s friends had begun to hate Indira Gandhi for the Emergency excesses… But, my dad – hundreds of miles away from Delhi, in this remote village called ‘Derebail’ – would defend fiercely his idol, whom Atalji once hailed as ‘Durga’… and my own dad as Mother Mary! He was such a blind devotee of Indira Gandhi! I would witness scores of bitter arguments, rather fights… yes over someone who my dad or ...