Gerald D'Cunha

  “A winner is the one who recognizes his God-given talents, works his tail off to develop them into skills, and uses these skills to achieve his goals.” Larry Bird   A couple of days ago, I saw a missed call after one of my online sessions. I called back and found it was Gitanjali. Gitanjali is the wife of one of my dear old-student, Sunil. Apparently, as my students often do, Sunil, too, had spoken about his old teacher   so much, at home, that this woman who heads a sales team in her organization   – a mother of young son who pursues Engineering – wanted to get some help from me… “Sir, I am good at my work… both my seniors and juniors have been giving me excellent feedback… But, I find myself tongue-tied in many situations and struggling for words and how to convey whatever I want to… Can you help me to overcome this problem, Sir? I want to improve my English.” I haven’t changed anything in   the above dialogue of Gitanjali… She spoke fluently,...

There was a lovely Kannada proverb, which, I used to hear people toy with, all around my village. One of my aunts, particularly, would toy it with her own inimitable rustic-flavor: “Ellara maneya dosai… Votttttey!” Means, the dosas in everyone’s house have holes (pores)! But, you are free to extract your own meaning out of this old saying of my village… We all have our own dents… Our character defects, our family problems, our social ills… We are no saints… We have our dark secrets, our endless conflicts, our shares of rows, woes and foes. Because there are walls, doors, windows and curtains… no one can see what is going on inside our houses… nor can anyone hear it. There are walls, doors, windows and curtains around our minds and hearts, too… We have our respective personal-flaws, the relationship-flaws – misunderstandings and fights, fears and insecurities… Yes, we all… the rich and the poor, the ...

I come across hundreds of students who are extremely shy to speak in public! I am not talking about speaking on stage, from a podium. I am talking about just in a class when the teacher is teaching… when she is asking a question. Yes, hundreds of students become tongue-tied, blanked-out… They forget what they want to say… They fumble, make more and more mistakes… And, then, they look around and assume that all others are ‘perfect’… They assume that others are laughing at their ‘mistakes’… They assume that something is wrong with them, only with them. So, they become ‘guilty’… apologetic… even angry with themselves… frustrated or depressed. I was one such student… Desperately shy… Chronically nervous in class and at every gathering! Speaking from stage was just unthinkable… Too terrifying even to think… leave alone attempt! In class, I had the right answers. But, I had a weak heart… too weak to raise my hand… leave alone stand up! ...