Gerald D'Cunha

  “Don’t leave a piece of jewelry at his house so you can go back and get it later; he may be with his real girlfriend.”   Amy Sedaris I n life, we learn some lessons the hard way. One of them is not to offer advice to any one – even our nearest and dearest ones – unless the advice is asked for. Did I say ‘even our nearest and dearest ones’? Yes, I did say. Let me be specific, here. Let’s look around us and see how some of our nearest and dearest ones blindly believe in fake news - divisive, communal, toxic and defamatory news, which is dished out, incessantly, through both mainstream and social media. When we see these dear ones of ours so addicted to this, what do we do? Initially, we try to tell them, “Honey, that’s fake news… That’s harmful… Stay away from it.” From where does our advice come? “From our concern, obviously,” we may think. But, do the other person/s think so? Chances are more, that our ‘out-of-concern advice’ may simply boomerang on us…...

S ome days ago, 18-year-old Ryan, one of our PD students, waited after everyone had left. “Sir, I wanted to point out a small printing error in this book,” he said respectfully. It was one of our popular books, and the printing error, which Ryan wanted to point out, was found, of all the places, in the Table of Contents! Well, not one error, there were two, there! I sincerely thanked Ryan, and complimented him for pointing it out with good intention and in the most civilized way… Our books are printed not with any commercial objective. We, who are involved with their writing, editing and publication, are not professionals. Despite our best efforts, mistakes do creep in; and, all that we do, whenever a mistake is brought to our notice, is - accept it gracefully, and gratefully… Ryan, our student, wanted to correct us… He, certainly, succeeded! During our PD session, today, 15-year-old Krish was on stage. He had just made a small grammat...