Gerald D'Cunha

  “There is no exercise better for the heart than reaching down and lifting people up.” John Holmes   S unil, who has been printing all our books (for over two decades), is deeply involved with many religious and charity works. They include seva relating to Shirdi pilgrimage, reaching out to poor village kids in schools of interior Maharashtra, serving food on Thursdays at the local Sai mandir or during Ganesh festivities, and so on. Being a printer, he, also, volunteers to do, free of cost, most of the work relating banners, souvenirs and certificates. “This is within my reach, and it gives me a lot of peace,” he says. But, Sunil gets annoyed when people around him start posting pictures and videos of such charity work on social media. “I tell them not to make any publicity or show of any seva that we do,” he says, “but, many of them don’t listen.” “Let your left hand not know what your right hand gives,” Jesus had advised. But, that advice seems outdated. Peo...

  “In the right light, at the right time, everything is extraordinary.”                                                               Aaron Rose               M y younger brother, Rony, is a gifted singer. He is very popular among the Mangalorean-Konkani music-lovers, both, here and abroad. He started singing on stage quite early. I remember him participating and winning singing competitions since his primary school-days. He kept participating in several competitions, winning most of them. Gradually, as a young singer, he joined popular bands and, also, started touring with well-known Konkani singing-legends. Recordings, too, became a regular part of his busy schedule… But, through all his hectic schedule, Rony largely depended on our Mom. She was his efficient manager, who would,...

“A hero is a man who is afraid to run away.” English Proverb F lorence Nightingale, once, said: “I am convinced, that the greatest heroes are those who do their duty in the daily grind of domestic affairs whilst the world whirls in maddening dreidel.” We humans have a huge weakness: we tend to get wooed by the larger-than-life heroes, the ones who show up wearing their impressive capes. In other words, we settle for the superheroes when it comes to inspiration, even though we know, that all heroes don’t show up wearing those impressive capes… In our blind worship towards the larger-than-life heroes, we fail to notice the real-life ones. They are there, literally, around us, and they are real. As Florence Nightingale said, these heroes are quietly engaged in their daily grind of domestic affairs… But, then, we only tend to fall for the glamorous, out-of-our-reach heroes. That’s how our weakness is embedded in our psyche… Yes, we want a Florence Nightingale only in our fantas...

“If you want to change the world,  stat off by making your bed… What started here will, indeed,  have changed the world.” Admiral William H McRaven A s I have told many times in my past Blogs, one of the biggest influences on my life has been Napoleon Hill’s books, particularly ‘Think and Grow Rich’ and ‘The Law of Success’. The main reason why his writings impacted me was the timing: I was reading them when I was jobless and hungry, here in Mumbai. I had just landed here with dreams tucked in my heart but unable to go after them due to a killing low self-confidence. I was full of self-doubts and fears, even though I was earnest and faithful. I was feeling lonely and lost… Yes, it was my ‘desert experience’… And, that was the time, I came across the used copies of Napoleon Hills books on Mumbai's (Bombay’s) footpaths… And, as the tagline on ‘Think and Grow Rich’ said, each of his books was ‘worth a million dollars’ to me! In ...

“A mother is not a person to lean on,  but a person to make leaning unnecessary.”  — Dorothy Canfield Fisher "T he hand that rocks the cradle, rules the world." No prizes for guessing whose hand that is... "God could not be everywhere; so, he created mothers." So, God outsourced some of His stress and tension to our mothers, you see. No wonder, mothers are called our 'shock absorbers'! A couple of days ago, Happy's (a boy) mother called up. "Sir, I am Happy's mother... He doesn't have class today?" she sounded quite anxious. It was the third class in a row Happy had missed. The reason given to me was, that he was busy with the college fest. Now, with whatever little interaction I had with this 18-year-old F.Y. BMS student, I knew, that he could be nowhere on the stage to display any of his talent. So, curiously, I had asked, "What are you busy with, dear?"...

Pic.: Chetna Shetty T wo days ago, one of my students’ (twelfth-standard, ISC) father had come to meet me. He was really concerned – rather disturbed - about his daughter’s unit-test marks. She had scored only twenty on hundred. Being a Chartered Accountant, and having gone the hard way up his ladder, and, above all, my student being his only child, the father was unable to comprehend how his daughter could score so low on marks… “Accountancy is not the subject to score so low unless one has no hold on the concepts at all, or unless one has not practiced,” the father looked at his daughter and said, “What is your case – are your concepts not clear or did you not practice?” “I did not practice,” the daughter murmured meekly to her father who sounded overwhelming. “I don’t think so,” the father reacted, “Had the concepts been clear, you would have managed to do something even with the help of those concepts.” “I told you, that I have understood the concepts,” the...

Pic.: Nirmala Sundar S everal years ago, one night, I was watching the TV show ‘Rendezvous with Simi Garewal’. The guest was Anil Ambani. The initial part of the interview centered around the legacy of Dhirubhai Ambani… Anil revealing how his father had started it as a petrol pump attendant in Eden (Egypt), and how, there, he had dreamt of starting, one day,  the largest refinery in his homeland, India… The humble childhood in a chawl at Bombay’s Kabootar khana… the one-room house, the common toilet… the brothers sharing their clothes and cricket bat… playing on the streets and feasting on roadside pavbhaji or Udipi food… When asked about the MBA in Wharton, Anil said that it was an enriching experience  interacting and learning from such an international class… but said that his and his brother Mukesh’s business education had begun at home right since they had turned teens… They would spend more than half of their day in office or factories helping...