Rodevra Republic

Every song - a moment lived The answers, as promised, to the quiz in the previous post, "Asha Bhosle — A Musical Journey in 10 Clues" But perhaps they are only a small part of what these songs hold. What follows are a few glimpses,  small moments that make each of them stay, often for reasons that are not immediately obvious. 1. Ab Ke Sajan Saawan Mein / Early years, with  Ravi . There is a simplicity here that feels untouched. Before the voice acquired its many shades, it had this easy, flowing quality. The rain does not pour—it settles. 2. Piya Tu Ab To Aaja / With R. D. Burman . That stretched, breathy call changed something. It brought breath itself into singing as expression. What could have been excessive somehow becomes unforgettable. A small aside: the “Monica… oh my darling…” was not just a line—it became a cultural echo. Even those who don’t recall the full song remember that call. 3. Aao Huzoor Tumko / With O. P. Nayyar . She d...

Asha Bhosle in her early years, before the legend, when life had already begun asking difficult things of her An enduring journey, of adaptability, reinvention, and quiet strength Much has been spoken about Asha Bhosle, but there is one quality that stands out and defines much of her journey. It was her fluid strength—the ability to bend without losing direction. She did not confront struggle head-on in a dramatic way. She flowed around it, and in doing so, outlasted it. It was a kind of restless adaptability combined with an emotional detachment from defeat. She did not just endure hardship, she refused to be defined by any single phase of it. After the death of her father, Dinanath Mangeshkar, the family was suddenly pushed into survival mode. Much is said about the struggle, but what is less spoken of is this. She began working not with a sense of artistic calling, but almost as a practical necessity. Unlike some artists who are nurtured into refinement, she entered the field withou...

A fingerprint, seen through layers of analysis—where observation often gives way to interpretation Every now and then, one comes across messages, often passed around as casual forwards, that begin with a few interesting facts and slowly move toward larger, more sweeping conclusions. They usually follow a familiar path. A scientific observation is presented, then expanded, and eventually interpreted in a way that goes well beyond what the original fact can support. Fingerprints offer a good example. It is true that fingerprints form before birth. It is also true that they are unique to each individual. These are established facts. But from here, the line of thinking often begins to shift. As someone who writes, I have become more aware of how language can gently steer thought. Not always deliberately, but effectively nonetheless. Certain patterns of expression, certain turns of phrase, can nudge the reader from observation toward conclusion without quite making the transition visible. V...

There are some lines which do not ask for explanation. They arrive complete. Deus intra me est — God is within me. At first, it feels almost too simple. As if nothing more needs to be said. And yet, if one lingers with it for a while, it begins to deepen, not by adding meaning, but by drawing attention inward. For a long time, the human instinct has been to look outward. To seek, to search, to reach beyond—into the world, into ideas, into distant possibilities. Civilisations have risen on this impulse. Philosophies have been built around it. And yet, alongside this outward movement, there has always been another, quieter one. A turning. A later rendering of the Greek maxim “Gnōthi seauton” (Know thyself), a timeless call to turn inward At Delphi, the Greeks had inscribed a simple line: Gnōthi seauton — Know thyself. It does not sound like a spiritual declaration. It sounds almost like advice. But those who stayed with it realised that this “knowing” was not about facts or des...

Some stories rise so sharply that their fall seems almost inevitable. This is one of them. Victor Niederhoffer — investor, thinker, and a witness to both the heights and limits of success Victor Niederhoffer, the son of a refugee who had fled Nazi Europe, grew up in the United States with a certain inherited resolve. Loss had already visited the family once, and perhaps that leaves behind a quiet determination to rebuild, to rise, to secure what had once been taken away. He was brilliant with numbers. Markets, which to most appear uncertain and restless, began to reveal patterns to him. He entered the world of finance and rose quickly, with a clarity of thought and confidence that set him apart. Success followed, and then more success. Wealth accumulated, and at one point, he stood among the very few who could be called billionaires. But success has a way of altering the very judgment that created it. Confidence deepens into conviction, and conviction, if left unchecked, begins to hard...

George Washington Carver working in his laboratory at Tuskegee Institute I was recently forwarded an article about an interesting psychological concept called social proof.  It can be broadly defined as the tendency of individuals to look to others to determine the correct behaviour in a given situation.  It rests on the implicit assumption that if many people believe or do something, it must be valid or acceptable. This behaviour is rooted in our evolutionary past where group consensus often had survival value. Considering how subtle and pervasive it is, manifesting in various forms in our lives, I realised the value of independent and critical thinking. I was looking for examples of people who demonstrated this quality—of standing against the tide and refusing to take the easy route to conformity. I did not have to stretch my thinking; the name of George Washington Carver (1864–1943) immediately came up. My acquaintance with him began years ago, through a colleague who spok...

JOMO—the quiet contentment of staying in, choosing presence over pressure, and finding value without needing to be everywhere . These days, it feels like you need a reason to stay at home. If you are not going somewhere, meeting someone, or doing something—it almost needs explaining Strange, because not very long ago, this was just… an evening. Perhaps it does not need much explaining after all. If one were to listen carefully, there is already a quiet answer. The Moment: There is always something happening somewhere. A sense that one could be elsewhere. JOMO answers: The evening has already arrived here. It just needs your quiet presence. The Moment: There is a new trend, a new place, a new conversation unfolding. It feels important to be part of it. JOMO answers: Not everything that unfolds needs your presence. The Moment: You scroll through moments that look fuller than your own. There is a quiet question—am I missing something? JOMO answers: Or are you finally not m...

The illusion of competence: sometimes we see a lion in the mirror when the world sees a cat Warren Buffett famously said, “Know your circle of competence, and stick within it. The size of that circle is not very important; knowing its boundaries, however, is vital.” While what he says is thought provoking, what it does not account for is the illusion of competence . What is the measure of competence, and how do we really know its boundaries? Very often we see investors who are self-professed “experts” and who, by that reckoning, claim competency. In an age of incompetence, the ordinary can easily appear extraordinary. This illusion of competence is far more dangerous than acknowledged incompetence. It is dangerous because the incompetent soon develop defence mechanisms of being nice, sociable, kind, and charming, basically falling in line to ensure acceptability in society. When enough people begin to do that, the path to mediocrity, even idiocracy, slowly gets established. Those who h...

There are some stories that come to us without certainty, yet carry a quiet conviction of their own. They are not anchored in documented fact, but in something that feels inwardly true. One such story is associated with Franz Kafka . It is said that Kafka once met a little girl in a park who was crying because she had lost her doll. To comfort her, he told her that the doll had not been lost, but had gone travelling. Over the next few days, he wrote letters to her, as if from the doll, describing its journeys. When he could no longer continue, he gave her another doll, gently explaining that the earlier one had “changed” through its travels. There is, however, no record of this in Kafka’s own writings. No letters, no diary entries, no manuscripts refer to such an incident. The story comes to us through a later recollection by Dora Diamant , who was with him toward the end of his life, and has since been retold second-hand over the years. No “doll letters” have ever been found, whi...

An imagined glimpse of an Elizabethan theatre—where stage and audience blur, and every life, in its own way, becomes part of the performance All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players; They have their exits and their entrances; And one man in his time plays many parts… The first feeling that comes on reading these lines is a certain lightness of being. It gives life a gentle perspective, loosening its grip of seriousness without making it trivial. There is also a quiet freedom in the thought that we can perform our roles sincerely, yet remain aware that the role is not the whole of us. This is suggested in the line, “And all the men and women merely players.” The word merely does not diminish us; rather, it places us within something larger than ourselves. We take on roles—a child, a student, a professional, a friend—play them for a while, and then move on. Just as actors do not own their roles, we do not fully own our identities either; they shift and chan...