Gerald D'Cunha

Pic.: Chetna Shetty Y ears ago, when I had decided to do something about my poor English, one of the things I did – and found it very useful – was telling a nice story in two tenses… Past and Present. Over the years, I have helped hundreds of people who were earnest to improve their English with the same method… Yes, write a nice story down in both the tenses… and tell it to someone. This popular Aesop’s fable was one of the earliest childhood stories I had heard. But, the temptation seems so familiar and lifelong! THE GOOSE THAT LAID GOLDEN EGG PAST: I n a certain town, there lived a man and his wife. They owned a goose which was special. It laid a golden egg every morning. This made the couple reasonably rich and happy. But, one morning, after the goose had laid the day’s egg, the wife said to her husband, “This goose just gives us only one golden egg a day. Just imagine how quickly we can become wealthy if we could have all ...

Pic.: Chetna Shetty I had dictated some notes in Neha’s* batch, last evening. After the class, I took her book so that I could dictate the same notes in the morning batch, today. And, today, as I began to dictate the notes from Neha’s book, I was doing, what the Facebook lingo tickles us to do: LOL! “Placed an order for goods wid Arun & Co worth Rs. 2,000/-.” “Received Rs.12,000/- from Anil & Co in full settlement of dhere account.” I stopped dictating from Neha’s book and asked my 16-and-17-year-olds the spellings of words such as ‘with’, ‘their’, ‘your’, ‘my’ and so on; and, I asked them what some famous FB abbreviations, such as LOL, P. and D. and what not, meant... We had a good time... yes, doing the LOL in the class... e -mails have killed the fine-art called ‘Letter Writing’... Such a beautiful art it was, once! Today, the young-ones have no patience to write notes... They just click a picture of it. It’s all over in a flash!...

"It is looting," Nikhil screamed, showing to me the 'vadapav' he had just bought from a vendor outside my office. "Sir, look at the 'vada' -- it's smaller than a 'rosgula', and see inside this ... there is hardly any 'batata' there; eight rupees they charged for this ... It's looting." "Why did you buy from them? There are so many vendors around," I consoled Nikhil. "Sir, I was so hungry; and, I did not know all this," he said, "Any way, this is my first and last visit to that goddamn joint." No doubt about it. Why Nikhil, nobody would pay a second visit there. Who are they? Jitesh, 30, is a graduate but unemployed for quite some time. Lata, his elder sister,35, is a divorcee having a 12-year-old son. Some time back, both approached me and said, "Sir, we have this shop here; we have not been using it. For so many years, we have been paying the Society maintenance and minimum electricity charg...