Gerald D'Cunha

  “If you haven’t got anything nice to say about anybody, come, sit next to me.” Alice Roosevelt Longworth   I don’t think, that any other animal on this planet indulges in gossip… as the most evolved one – humans – do. Perhaps, this weird irony made Steve Toltz remark: “Sometimes, I think, the human animal doesn’t really need food or water, only gossip.” The latest gossip, which has kept the human animals busy and amused in our country, is the divorce of Aamir Khan and Kiran Rao. When my wife broke the news to me the night before last, I felt like yelling at her… But, then, for the safety of our own marriage, I pretended as if I was deaf… The night passed, and, yesterday the hot news - ‘Tumne suna hai? Aamir Khan aur Kiran Rao ka divorce ho gaya!’ – was everywhere. So, how many gossip-mongers could I yell at? My mother, who hadn’t gone to a school and a college as her sons did, would, always, yell at us when we brought gossip home: “Tho thachen lekh ditolo.” Tr...

"Fear is the lengthened shadow of ignorance.” — Arnold Glasow S ome forty years ago, when I came to this one-of-a-kind city, Bombay – now Mumbai - my uncle and aunt (dad’s younger brother and his wife) were kind enough to accommodate me in their small house for seven long years. I lived with them as their own son. I learnt to be more responsible, disciplined, and, above all, more adjustable while I lived with them. I loved my aunt’s funny one-liners. One of them was my favorite: ‘ Su endare sukrunde’ … Translated from Kannada, it meant: Su means Sukurunde! Well, ‘sukrunde’ is the name of a local (Mangalorean) sweet-laddo. So, just a ‘su’ is enough for a gossip-monger or a rumour-monger to make a nice ‘sukrunde’… It was her pet one-liner, which she used every time she would hear someone around her spinning baseless stories – gossip and rumour (Today’s ‘fake news’, which, in our local Tulu, we called ‘ Ge Suddhi’ ) - my aunt had her one...

Pic.: Anima D'Cunha “Fire and swords are slow engines of destruction, compared to the tongue of a Gossip.”   - Richard Steele     D o I gossip? Much, much less now. But, the habit is not gone fully. There is some strange kick – a kind of self-gratification – whenever we gossip about other people… I, obviously, did not like when others gossiped about me… I hated it… I knew how damaging it was. And, that realization was enough to lock my own loose tongue… Leave other people alone, as you want them to leave you alone. But, then, as I told you, there ‘is’ some strange kick, some intoxicating substance, coming out of the gossip we all indulge in. Hence, we fall prey for it… become its addicts… “Gossip spreads faster than fire,” the saying goes. I add this: “It sells faster than Salman’s movies, too!” E arly in the morning, today, when I opened ‘Bombay Times’, I was amused…  In fact, I was shocked and angry ...

When our little-ones get bored during their two-hour PD sessions, they want something to light-up their hearts... Some short movie, some songs-videos which can make them dance, some quiz, riddles or jokes and, mostly, some games. Because I want them to become leaders, overcome their shyness, I always encourage them to come out with their own stress-buster ideas. Believe me, they come out with plenty... It's always games galore... Right from Dumb-charades to Chinese Whispers. They enjoy.... I, too. Last afternoon, while they were playing 'Chinese Whispers', I wondered if they knew that's how almost all of us went about communicating in our daily lives. There were about twenty-five of those little ones, all below age 13. The little lady in the first bench here whispered something into the little-fellow's ears, next to her. The message got transmitted from ear to ear till it reached the last b...