Gerald D'Cunha

“If your heart is a volcano, how shall you expect flowers to bloom?” - Kahlil Gibran T oday is my twenty-sixth wedding anniversary. Sorry: ‘our’ wedding anniversary… my wife’s and mine!  “It is always about ‘me’,” my wife, often, points to my blunders, “It is not about ‘us’!” But, I know it is never about ‘me’, always… Still, there is a point my dear wife tries to make: “Don’t ignore me… Care for me… Love me… We are together in this -  this ship called ‘marriage’.” A ship to sail for twenty-six years in this sea and survive is not a small achievement. If I post today our picture (me and my wife together) on FB, I am certain to get some of these comments: “Perfect couple”… “Lovely couple”… “Amazing couple”… “Wonderful Couple”… “Super-duper couple”… and, some blessings, too: “God Bless You”… “Stay Blessed” etc.… Well, we need everyone’s blessings, sure. But, when I read a  comment like, “Perfect Couple” or “Ama...

L ast week, I came across a young lady and her little son. The little-one had completed an amazing project on making this planet free from pollution and toxins. Both, mother and son, were sharing with me their ideas with great enthusiasm and conviction… What a lovely though! What a lovely learning at such tender age! When a child really becomes conscious and responsible on issues pertaining to the planet, which houses all of us, I think… there is hope for this planet. For, the consciousness expands… the more and more little children begin to grasp this truth early and grow up holding themselves responsible for the mess created on this planet, then, there is bound to be the ripple-effect of such consciousness… At least, I think so! Imagine, if the greed continues… Imagine if we continue to destroy trees and forests, bring down hills and mountains, convert deserts a into waterlands and waterlands into concrete jungle…  chase animals out of their forests… dig d...

“Empathy is like giving someone a psychological hug.” - Lawrence J M y friend, Mukesh, has been a popular Physics teacher. He loved the Physics subject both in school and college… and, when it came to choosing a career, he rightly chose to be a Physics teacher… Since that decision, Mukesh has taught Physics to thousands of students, mostly college students… and fired their imagination! Two days ago, Mukesh had come to me to discuss a problem he was grappling with. He was with me for nearly thirty minutes and, all that I did was just listen to him with empathy, sincerely… knowing fully that I had no answers to his problems… Yet, he had chosen me to be his sounding board… come to me and talk. In fact, Mukesh has been doing it quite often… Whenever his mind needed some clarity, he would come to people like me and talk… while we would simply listen, without judging him and without jumping to our conclusions, leave alone solutions. ...

“There is no competition of sounds between a nightingale and a violin.”  ―  Dejan Stojanovic I think, Virat Kohli is one of the most aggressive and competitive cricketers today. He has it all: style and substance, grit, grace and allure. But, then, when I watch the plight of his IPL team in the on-going edition of IPL, I feel bad for him… The ship has sunk, and I don’t think, it can come up, again, this season! But, then, that’s a cricket match… a small part of Life. It is not Life itself! Kohli, like Shahrukh Khan and Amitabh Bachchan, is running a race in his own track. These legends shine in a league of their own… There is competition out there… For, it is man-eat-man world out there… Cut-throat. Yes, cut-the-throat! As blunt and cruel as that… But, then, there comes a time in every legend’s life, when he learns to view competition from a sublime and spiritual perspective… There is a race beyond this rat-r...

D uring our P.D. sessions, I show to little-ones and young-ones some of the best scenes from the movie ‘3 Idiots’. If I say that they all love it, it is not only an understatement, it is also an obvious truth I am stating. People of all age and taste, every class and creed have loved ‘3-Idiots’… Rancho and Chatur. “Why do you like this movie?” I have asked little kids, young-ones and even parents. The answer, invariable, sumps up this: We all want to be like Rancho – free, creative, intelligent, witty and sensitive… yet, something has made us reluctantly embrace the Chatur in our hearts… We don’t like the Chatur in us… we do not like to be the real idiot like him… and don’t mind labeled as ‘idiots’ by the society, the system… But, then, ‘Marks are important’… you see… The exact words, including the commas and full stops, in a definition are important you see… What the class teacher has given as answer to the question and not what you think as the answ...

A re we ‘originals’, or are we ‘duplicates’? One of the reasons, why we do not ‘express’ ourselves fully – and by ‘express’ I mean, in fullness… through our talents, skills, strengths and uniqueness and, yes, through our speech, too – is that we do not know who we really are… how good, how special and how valuable. And, because we have no idea about our own worth… we do not operate from our core – the source of our strength… we only operate from the shallow surface… Fear dissolves when we get hold of our inner source, the core… the depth of our specialness. Once, we begin to operate from our core, there is no stopping… the talents, skills, strengths will simply blossom, just the way everything else under the God’s sky does… from there, we express ourselves fully, fearlessly… just the way every original creation of God does under His sky… God hasn’t created us in a factory mass-production line… He has created each one of us individually… separately… and incre...

T here is a very moving scene in Richard Attenborough’s movie, ‘Gandhi’… Young Gandhi, after leading years of non-violent struggle in South Africa, has returned to India. The well-known leaders of Indian freedom-struggle want Gandhi to take a plunge in the freedom struggle… But, Gandhi is in no hurry… He senses the disconnect between the leaders who live in sophistication and the masses that live in acute poverty… So, he decides to travel across the length and breadth of the country… into the deepest interiors… to feel the plight of people… to feel connected with them… be one with them… Yes, before he could take the mantle of being their Moses! During this travel, one day, he comes near a village river just to splash some water on his tired face… On the other side, barely some yards away, he notices village women washing clothes, tucking little babies to their bosoms… Poverty is visible, the clothing is just not sufficient to cover their dignity… One woman, who gets ...

T he strength of one’s character is tested in tough times… and not when everything seems smooth and fine. When chips are down, when people around you accuse you despite being good and gentle… when they desert you while you need them the most - some of them who you trusted the most, who you helped the most and, even, gave your neck to, staking your life and reputation - yes, when these people around you make you feel lonely in times of your crisis, Life reveals who you are… your character! “Life is not a bed of roses,” in school, most of us wrote essays on this topic. But, at that age, we had hardly touched life, the real life. In a way, Life was a bed of roses for most of us, when we were young kids. It was only when we began to walk out into the real world, that we began to sense how it really was outside… You may find that people are selfish… They may not be loyal to you all the way… They may even turn into your enemies when you expect it the least… You may find...

‘S orry’ is a magic word.  We try to inculcate this value – this lesson – in the hearts of little children. What happens when these children grow up? Does ‘Sorry’ continue to be a magic word? This morning, I had an ‘opportunity’ to deal with two giant egos. One of a man and another of a woman… both highly educated and in their mid-fifties. Amazing thing was: we have been having a wonderful, long relationship! I was talking to them on different issues, this morning. Strangely, I got to observe how I was getting dragged into an ego-trip simply because both of them had taken a strong position. One option for me was: to acknowledge their position – the stand – and respect it, however different it was from mine… Even if it meant swallowing my pride… which, for a moment, also seemed like humiliation… The other option for me was to try my best to dislodge them from their positions… prove them wrong and prove me right… and, thereby, run the risk of ruining our long-s...