Gerald D'Cunha

Pic.: Alwyn Mathias “Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished.” -  Lao Tzu S ometimes, when I meet some of my ex-students, after many years, I get amused by two of their familiar questions: “Sir, do you still teach?” And, this one: “Are you still ‘there’?” I am so used to these questions from my ‘very successful’ ex-students, that I have my answers, too, kept ready for them… To the first question, I ask them with a grin: “What else do you want me to do?” To the second one, this: “Where else do you want me to go?” I don’t think there is anything wrong with or surprising about the questions of my ex-students. They can’t believe that, after thirty-six years, I can still continue teaching the same way as I did then… They expect me to ‘grow’…. run my classes more professionally, the way others around me do… yes, like a good, profitable business… They want me to hire teachers and run it through them… wherein I should just ...

Pic.: Indu Varier 1 977. I was still not out of college, then. Mrs. Indira Gandhi was a Durga then, and her Congress was the Nazi, all powerful. The USSR was something the US and her allies’ feared about… They called it the ‘Iron Curtain’, the ‘Evil Empire'… There was NATO to deal with SATO. 'Made in USA' meant pride, a huge thing… Japan was still standing outside the door… and, 'Made in China', no one thought, would, one day, mean ‘sell-all-over-the-world’, and ‘even-a-beggar-can-afford’! IBM was a Polestar; Mohammad Ali was the ‘Greatest’… West Indies and Clive Lloyd still ruled Cricket, Brazil and Pele, football! There was a despot called Idi Amin, who ruled a country called Uganda…They say, he was so mean, so heartless, that he ate human flesh for his breakfast!... All that I heard of Reliance, then, was an ad which said, ‘Only VIMAL’… I don’t hear about VIMAL anymore. Reliance is everywhere, but! Was Kejriwal b...