|| Swanta Sukhaya ||

Greetings! One thing common among Zoologists and Management Gurus (and perhaps the rare amphibian-cuisine-connoisseurs) is their fascination with the boiled frog! So, what is this oft-repeated sordid tale of the poor and ultimately scathed amphibian?  The pop version goes as follows -  "A frog is let into a pot with water. It makes itself comfy and takes to it like a fish (or rather like a frog) in water. Then the pot is very slowly heated. The frog ignores this slow, gradual, incremental change. But then, at one point of time, the water starts boiling and it is too late for the frog to get out of situation. The frog gets boiled eventually." Morale of this pop version of story is clear - beware of slow, gradual, incremental changes. Watch out for tell-tale signs, lest the situation worsens to the doomsday scenario.  They even have a name for this condition where people, organizations and societies go on ignoring gradual change and then eventually face their doom on accoun...

Greetings! Hindustani Classical Music stands on a tradition that goes back for thousands of years (perhaps even more). Some of the greatest musical minds have contemplated and honed the essential patterns (ragas), which pass through the thick-skin and dulled-mind and touch the soul. One such raga is "Bhatiyar", that evokes the sense of trickling twilight  of early morning and gently stirs the soul from dark nothingness to the life giving light of - purpose and action!  Over years many musicians and singers have sought refuge of this raga to create timeless melodies.  Let us enjoy one such amazing journey of this raga that resulted into stirring of thousands of hearts - which ended up lifting millions of minds out of centuries of darkness. It all happened suddenly and unexpectedly on one of the balmy Mumbai nights in the 1980s.  Ace singers Suresh Wadkar, Kavita Krishnamurthy and awesome (but relatively unknown) composer Ashok Patki had been working almost non stop si...