Gerald D'Cunha

B efore Jaya Bachchan assumed her husband’s famous surname, she was already a superstar. Her husband was nowhere near the superstardom. But, once she married to him, she chose to focus on her family… “That’s where I am needed now,” she said, “That’s where I belong.” Well, those were not the days of Twitter and social media. Even TV was just a toddler in India. So, mostly through some film magazines and the word of mouth, we all came to know that our favourite ‘Guddi’ would not be seen in the films anymore… at least, not in the near future. It took some eighteen long years for Jaya Bachchan to come back to films. By now, of course, she couldn’t be a heroine. But, she acted in a movie here and a movie there… M eanwhile, her famous husband was going through his own inner churning… Following Mrs. Indira Gandhi’s assassination, her son, Rajiv Gandhi, had become our Prime Minister. It was an emotional moment for Amitabh Bachchan. Who was a close friend ...

“Slow down... Life is crossing the road.” ―  Debasish Mridha R ight now, my body, mind and heart – all three yearn to rest. “Enough of aggression,” I hear them remind me, “Slow down… Keep your tools down… Just yield.” Almost four to five hours in the morning, today, I found myself in an aggressive mode – aggressive in the sense: I was result oriented, my words were piercing, patience was on the edge… and I could feel I was getting the work done from my students. Yes, there was that immediate sense of achievement… But, when it was all over, I could also feel the vacuum… the energy was all depleted… all my students gone and I was left alone, here, to wonder: If there was another way of going about it… A way where my energy would be conserved, words not as pricing as they were and patience not as edgy as it was… So, now, when I have dropped my tools and aggression and able to reflect, yes, I do feel, that there certainly was anoth...

“ It isn't the mountains ahead to climb that wear you out;  it's the pebble in your shoe. ” - Muhammad Ali F or the last three weeks or so, I have been watching videos of Muhammad Ali’s boxing contests… the famous ones and the less famous ones… His knock-outs and knock-downs… I have been reading anything and everything about Muhammad Ali… Watching his interviews, listening to his songs and speeches and, not to miss – his famous ‘trash-talk’. Call it ‘bragging’ if you like… Of course, at your own peril! People who thought Ali was a loud-mouth bragger and too self-obsessed - which include his legendary opponents like as Joe Frazier and George Foreman – later changed their opinion about Ali’s flamboyant-and-brash-sounding lingo… They ended up being his lifetime friends harbouring in their hearts tremendous respect for him… I was first introduced to Muhammad Ali by my dad when I was a little school boy, back in my village… Th...