Gerald D'Cunha

  “Kindness is a language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see.” Mark Twain   I have come across two kinds of balloon sellers. The first kind are men with little babies in their  hands. This kind would keep pestering you to buy a balloon or two from them crying, “Saab, bachha ne khana nahin kaya.” Invariably, we would find this kind when our family is just walking out of a restaurant after dinner… It's a disturbing sight… Your family has had a sumptuous dinner, and here is the balloon seller weeping, that his little one is going to sleep hungry at night. “He is a habitual beggar; ignore him,” one side of me prompts me. But, then, I pull out a note of twenty or fifty, give him and walk away for my own guilt-free heart. The second kind are mostly little kids – around the age of 10 to 12 or something like that. I have met them selling balloons, key chains, tissue papers etc., and, yes, mostly while coming out of a mall, an ice-cream parlor or a restaur...

A few minutes ago, I saw on FB the iconic scene from the Hindi movie, ‘Deewar’, often referred as ‘the boot polish scene’… or, ‘Main-pheke-hue-paise-nahin-uthata’ scene… For those who are clueless about it, here is the narration… Vijay (Master Alankar playing child Amitabh) is a boot-polish boy. The harsh circumstances have filled him with not only anger but also a great amount of self-belief and pride… Though we know it is of misplaced kind, we empathize with this kid… After all, Life and God had not been fair to him, right? So, he is angry, he is a rebel and wants to recover his lost dignity… his mother’s particularly… In the process, he has refused to go to school or temple… He thinks he is the master of his fate and captain of his soul… So, in this iconic scene, the impeccably-dressed mafia-chief (Iftekhar) with his associate (Sudhir) land up at the boot-polish stand for their shoes to be polished… When little Vijay has done with Chief’s associate, the latter ...

A very qualified young man , who had been well-employed for many years, lost his job a year ago. I met him yesterday, and I was surprised: he hasn’t still found another! This young man is in his late thirties… Not married yet. Though lives in his parental house, he needs a job to run the house… I wondered as to how he could manage! As I was talking to him, the young man gave me at least half-a-dozen reasons as to why he was not getting a job, now: the job market was bad; the Companies were down-sizing; they were not ready to pay what he was demanding; the previous Company bosses and colleagues were conspiring against him; the prospective employers were asking him to take up assignment at a place not of his choice; he wasn’t getting the job of his taste… timings; salary; people… etc., etc. Fair enough. Still, for almost a year, a young, qualified man not getting a decent job under the Sun was not something that I was able to digest easily. Something was wrong...