Dr. Chandrasekaran G

Asha Bhosle was cast out by her own family at 16. She’d eloped with her elder sister Lata Mangeshkar’s secretary, a man twice her age. The marriage turned abusive. She walked out with two children and a third on the way, returning to a family that barely wanted her back. To survive, she took every recording job the top singers rejected. In Indian cinema, actors don’t sing their own songs. Singers record in a studio, and the actors lip-sync on camera. In the 1950s, the big films went to established voices. Bhosle got the leftovers: B-grade soundtracks, cabaret numbers, songs for the villain’s girlfriend. Between 1948 and 1957, she recorded more songs than any other singer in the country, but almost none of them mattered. Her break came from composer O.P. Nayyar, who gave her the lead songs in Naya Daur (1957). For the first time, she was the voice of the heroine. By the mid-1960s, she’d partnered with a young composer named R.D. Burman. Their first major collaboration nearly didn’t happen. When Bhosle heard the westernized dance number “Aaja Aaja” for Teesri Manzil (1966), she told Burman she couldn’t sing it. He offered to rewrite the music. She refused, rehearsed for ten days, and delivered one of the decade’s biggest hits. That professional partnership became a marriage in 1980. Burman died in 1994. In 1981, composer Khayyam asked her to sing two notes lower than usual for the film Umrao Jaan. The ghazals (traditional Urdu love songs) she recorded won her India’s National Film Award and shattered the idea that she could only do pop. At 62, she recorded the Rangeela soundtrack with A.R. Rahman. At 79, she made her debut as a film actress. Guinness World Records certified her in 2011 as the most recorded artist in music history. She put out over 11,000 songs in more than 20 languages across eight decades, and no other recording artist on Earth has come close. Her voice crossed borders in ways almost no Indian artist had before. Cornershop wrote “Brimful of Asha” about her in 1997, and a Fatboy Slim remix sent it to No. 1 in the UK. The Black Eyed Peas sampled her vocals. The Kronos Quartet, a classical string ensemble, recorded an album of R.D. Burman compositions with her and earned a Grammy nomination. Earlier this year, at 92, she appeared on a Gorillaz track. She outlived the people closest to her. Her daughter Varsha died in 2012 at 56. Her son Hemant died of cancer in 2015. Her sister Lata, the most famous singer in Indian history, died in 2022, also at 92. After Varsha’s death, Bhosle told reporters the pain would stay with her until her last breath, but added: “You should always laugh with others but cry alone.” Asha Bhosle died today in Mumbai at 92. She recorded her first song at 10, her last collaboration at 92, and spent the 82 years in between proving that the woman they once threw out could outlast every voice that came before or after her.

BJP releases list of 27 candidates for Tamil Nadu Assembly elections; Dr Tamilisai Soundararajan to contest from Mylapore, Vanathi Srinivasan to contest from Coimbatore (North), Dr. L. Murugan from Avanashi (SC)

Trump's entire presidency can be explained by one word: Boredom. No grand strategy. No doctrine. He has a dopamine deficit. Most presidents pick one or two legacy defining projects and spend their entire term on them. LBJ had civil rights. Nixon had China. Obama had the ACA. These were years-long obsessions. Trump is wired differently. He has the attention span of a goldfish. Mass deportations were the big thing. ICE raids, military at the border, the whole spectacle. Then the dopamine hit faded. Next: rename the Kennedy Center after himself. Got his name up on the building, artists pulled out, the whole place is shutting down for “renovations”. Mission accomplished, bored again. Then the White House needed a makeover. Demolished the East Wing. Gold in the Oval Office. Paved over the Rose Garden. Building a $400 million ballroom. Kidnapped Maduro from Venezuela. Literally abducted a sitting head of state, flew him to New York, said "we're going to run the country." Watched it on TV like a reality show. Got the Nobel Peace Prize medal from Machado as a gift. Kept it. He told Norway he no longer feels "an obligation to think purely of Peace" because they didn't give him the prize. Think about that sentence for a moment. Now it's Iran. A full-scale war. Bombing campaigns, Strait of Hormuz disrupted, US troops & military equipment getting hit in Saudi Arabia, oil prices through the roof. GCC countries taking a huge hit. Fertilizer shortage leading to food shortages. The OECD has slashed global growth forecasts. Energy emergency declarations in Asia. Latest: let me get my signature on the dollar bill. First sitting president to do it. Replaced the Treasurer's signature that's been there for 165 years. Done. Next. In behavioral science, we talk about habituation: the tendency for a stimulus to lose its impact over time. What once thrilled you becomes background noise. You need a bigger hit. Most people experience this with coffee, drugs or social media. Trump experiences it with geopolitics. The problem is this: a president's boredom is not a private matter. When Trump moves from one vanity project to another, each abandoned pursuit and each new obsession imposes enormous costs on real people. The Iran war alone so far has caused $63 billion in economic losses across the Arab region, according to the UN. Oil prices are hammering developing economies. Food and energy costs are rising everywhere. Every legacy item he picks up, he picks up like a toy. And when he puts it down, the wreckage stays. Most presidents impose costs on the world to achieve something. Trump imposes costs on the world because he got bored of the last thing. The tragedy is not that America has a president who wants a legacy. Every president does. The tragedy is that America has a president who wants five legacies simultaneously, finishes none, and the world pays the price for each abandoned pursuit. The psychological toll alone is staggering. Monitoring the situation everyday can be rather stressful. This isn't ideology. This isn't strategy. This is a man managing his boredom at global scale.

India may need Chinese expertise for projects in Arunachal: Jairam Ramesh http://toi.in/dj0Xj8

🚨 HUGE! A Pakistan Air Force aircraft reportedly TRANSITED India-controlled airspace today en route from Lahore to Sri Lanka, despite the existing BAN on Pakistan-registered & operated aircraft.

DGCA: An aircraft carrying Dy CM Ajit Pawar crashed at Baramati. 5 onboard. Initial reports of no survivors. Aircraft VT- SSK is a Learjet 45 and belonged to Delhi-based charter company VSR Ventures Private Limited

Met someone great on my flight just now. 👀 Data Scientist in London. ✅ Stays in Koramangala. 🦹 Did her master's in the UK and joined there to work in legal/finance! 🔥 I have one hour to impress her, guys! Will update how it goes! Wish me luck! 🤞 P.S. Saw a sign from God in the airport cafe where we first met

I will delete this post if you can show me one single minister from entire Modi's cabinet with this level of qualifications.