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SADEHA 20.mp4

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Collection: Part 1 · VIDEHA MITHILA MAITHILI DISCUSSION CRITICISM SERIES PART 1
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Duration: 43:25
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0:00–0:30यूआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआ�
0:30–0:32We want our problems to be easily categorized.
0:32–0:33We really do.
0:33–0:38But then, then you step out of the hospital and into the world of culture and identity
0:38–0:42and sociology and suddenly that X-ray machine is completely malfunctioning.
0:42–0:44Oh, totally.
0:44–0:45The image is just a blur.
0:45–0:46Right.
0:46–0:50The landscape we're looking at today isn't medical, obviously, but the diagnostic muddy
0:50–0:52waters are exactly the same.
0:52–0:56We're looking at an ancient culture trying desperately to diagnose its own modern
0:56–0:59identity and there are absolutely no clean breaks to be found.
0:59–1:02is when a deeply rooted centuries old culture
1:02–1:06collides head on with the hyper fast,
1:06–1:09relentless machinery of the digital age,
1:09–1:12it doesn't just fracture, it mutates.
1:12–1:13Mutates, yeah.
1:13–1:15It quits these bizarre new fusions.
1:15–1:16It's incredibly messy.
1:16–1:17I mean, you're essentially watching
1:17–1:20a living, breathing organism trying to adapt
1:20–1:22to an alien environment in real time.
1:22–1:25And that is exactly the collision we're exploring today.
1:25–1:27So welcome to the deep dive.
1:27–1:31I want you, listening right now, to picture something with me.
1:31–1:34Imagine an incredibly rich linguistic and cultural
1:34–1:36tradition known as Mathili.
1:36–1:38It's rooted in the Mathila region,
1:38–1:41which is this fascinating geographic and cultural space
1:41–1:44that spans across parts of India and Nepal.
1:44–1:45Yeah.
1:45–1:47And we're talking about a heritage built on epic poetry,
1:47–1:50profound philosophy, and these intricate folk traditions
1:50–1:52that have literally been passed down orally
1:52–1:54and on palm leaf manuscripts for centuries.
1:54–1:56Yes, centuries of history.
1:56–1:59Now imagine taking all of that ancient heavy cultural weight
1:59–2:02and slamming right into the dial-up internet era
2:02–2:03of the early 2000s.
2:03–2:06It's just a stunning visual contrast.
2:06–2:09You have the rhythm of rural agrarian life
2:09–2:12and ancient scriptures suddenly being digitized
2:12–2:14into like HTML coding and MP3 files.
2:14–2:17It's an evolutionary leap happening
2:17–2:18in a fraction of the time it normally
2:18–2:20takes a culture to shift.
2:20–2:20Precisely.
2:20–2:23And out of that specific chaotic collision,
2:23–2:25an internet archive was actually born
2:25–2:27way back in the year 2000.
2:27–2:30It was a pioneering effort that eventually evolved
2:30–2:32into an e-journal called Videha.
2:32–2:36And today, we're diving deep into a massive stack
2:36–2:40of source material from an entire issue of this journal,
2:40–2:41Issue 20 specifically.
2:41–2:42And it is massive.
2:42–2:44It's a staggering comprehensive compilation
2:44–2:48of methodically prose, poetry, cultural critique,
2:48–2:50and sociological analysis.
2:50–2:51It really is.
2:51–2:53So our mission for this deep dive
2:53–2:58to explore exactly how this culture navigates this messy transition into the modern world.
2:58–3:01We're going to examine how they grapple with the commercialization of their music,
3:01–3:05the remarkably dark and petty politics of their academic institutions,
3:05–3:09and some deeply unsettling societal hypocrisies that still exist today.
3:09–3:14But crucially, we're also going to look at how the absolute soul of their culture
3:14–3:20is preserved through these incredible subversive, almost secret folk traditions.
3:20–3:26Yeah, and the underlying current running through all of these different essays and reviews and diary entries in issue 20
3:26–3:30Is this constant churning battle between two specific forces?
3:30–3:34Okay, lay it out for us. So on one side. Mm-hmm. You have what we can call scripture
3:34–3:38And I'm using that word in the broadest sense here to mean the rigid
3:39–3:46formalized official rules and hierarchies that society tries to impose right the official rule book exactly and on the other side
3:46–3:53And you have the folk reality that's the fluid, messy, adaptive and highly practical way that
3:53–3:56everyday people actually survive and live their lives on the ground.
3:56–3:58The tension between the ideal and the real.
3:58–4:01And I want to say to you listening, whether you're a student of cultural anthropology,
4:01–4:05a musicology nerd, or just someone who is insanely curious about how ancient human
4:05–4:09traditions survived the digital meat grinder, this collection of essays is an absolute
4:09–4:10goldmine.
4:10–4:11Oh, absolutely.
4:11–4:17It serves as a mirror reflecting the exact same cultural growing pains that happen everywhere,
4:17–4:21just viewed through a very specific vivid lens.
4:21–4:22So let's unpack this.
4:22–4:26The early pages of the journal are heavily dominated by the digital frontier of Mussolini
4:26–4:27music.
4:27–4:32We get this sweeping look at the commercialization and the frantic attempt at preservation
4:32–4:33in this new era.
4:33–4:37Music is almost always the canary in the coal mine for broader cultural shifts, you
4:37–4:38know?
4:38–4:39Mm-hmm, always.
4:39–4:42material, there's a highly detailed breakdown provided by
4:42–4:45Gagendra Thakur. He documents the entire landscape of
4:45–4:48Mithili CD and DVD albums hitting the market at that
4:48–4:49specific time.
4:49–4:51Right, the actual physical media.
4:51–4:54Yeah, he lists the artists, the specific albums, and the
4:54–4:57recording companies, names like Ganga Cassettes and the
4:57–5:00T-Series that were mass producing this content.
5:00–5:02But the very first thing Thakur notes, which acts as a
5:02–5:05glaring red flag for the entire culture, is the
5:05–5:08absolute lack of children's albums.
5:08–5:11Yeah, I remember reading that he explicitly points out that there is a total void.
5:11–5:12Right.
5:12–5:17Which is wild, because this is a region with an incredibly rich, centuries-old tradition
5:17–5:21of folk songs, lullabies, and communal music meant to be sung at home.
5:21–5:27Yet, when it comes to producing modern physical media, the CDs and DVDs that people are
5:27–5:32actually buying and putting into their players, there is literally nothing for the youth.
5:32–5:37And we really have to pause here, because the implications of that are massive.
5:37–5:41I mean what happens to a language to a distinct cultural identity when its children are not
5:41–5:43given media in their native tongue?
5:43–5:45They just don't engage with it.
5:45–5:46Exactly.
5:46–5:51If the entire digital landscape, every CD in the local shop, every DVD, every early digital
5:51–5:57download is entirely dominated by adult themes, commercial pop, or high-level religious chants,
5:57–6:00the children are implicitly absorbing a very dangerous lesson.
6:00–6:03They're being taught that their native language is a historical artifact.
6:03–6:04Yes.
6:04–6:08Artifact meant only for adults, not a living breathing playground for them to explore.
6:08–6:12I mean, Taghurt does mention a few plays and small educational initiatives, but the commercial
6:12–6:17music industry, the entity with the actual reach and power, has completely abandoned
6:17–6:18the youth.
6:18–6:21Which feels like cultural self-sabotage, honestly.
6:21–6:25And that self-sabotaging behavior bleeds directly into Dinesh Yadav's essay, which
6:25–6:30focuses specifically on the state of Methili music in the Nepal region.
6:30–6:31Yeah, that essay is intense.
6:31–6:32It really is.
6:32–6:37The sources paint a picture of a geographic area that is practically dripping with musical
6:37–6:40heritage, but the actual industry is suffocating.
6:40–6:46It's being choked by hypercommercialization, intense nepotism, and what Yadav literally
6:46–6:49describes as a syndicate mentality.
6:49–6:53And the term syndicate is used very deliberately there.
6:53–6:58The essay reveals that a very small tightly knit handful of powerful individuals have
6:58–7:01basically monopolized the entire infrastructure.
7:01–7:02Wow.
7:02–7:05control the radio airwaves, they control the distribution, and they control the regional
7:05–7:08awards, it's the ultimate gatekeeping mechanism.
7:08–7:12They only promote their own people, their own preferred styles, and they completely freeze
7:12–7:14out new authentic talent.
7:14–7:17And you have to remember the context of the market here, right?
7:17–7:21Because the regional market is relatively small compared to massive natural industries.
7:21–7:24If you get blocked by the syndicate, you have nowhere else to go.
7:24–7:25You're just done.
7:25–7:26Exactly.
7:26–7:29You can't just bypass them and upload to a million followers back then.
7:29–7:33radio and these specific cultural awards dictate an artist's entire
7:33–7:38livelihood. And the text gives this wildly illustrative almost cinematic
7:38–7:43example of this corruption playing out in real time with the Vigipati awards in
7:43–7:47Nepal. Oh I love this part. Set the stage for us. Okay so for context Vigipati is
7:47–7:52the legendary cultural icon and poet of Missila. His name carries immense
7:52–7:58sacred weight. So you have this award a million rupee award which is a
7:58–8:01a life-changing amount of money for a regional artist.
8:01–8:02Right. Huge money.
8:02–8:06It was a sensibly meant to honor the greatest singers in the culture.
8:06–8:11But due to sheer, unabashed cronyism, the syndicate decided to give this massive singing award
8:11–8:12to a translator.
8:12–8:14A translator, not a singer.
8:14–8:18Exactly. A decision that naturally caused an absolute uproar in the community.
8:18–8:22The text highlights the reaction of the legendary Mathili singer named Muraleedhar.
8:22–8:27The journal describes Muraleedhar as a pioneer, someone whose raw contribution to Mathili
8:27–8:30film music and culture is virtually unmatched.
8:30–8:31And how did he react?
8:31–8:36When this award was announced, Mjodlidhar essentially staged a one-man rebellion.
8:36–8:42He boldly and publicly rejected this million rupee award in protest of the corruption and
8:42–8:46the blatant disrespect shown to the actual working musicians.
8:46–8:50Wait, he was offered the award alongside the translator or later?
8:50–8:54He rejected the entire premise and structure of the awards once the corruption became
8:54–8:55clear.
8:55–8:57He didn't just quietly decline either.
8:57–9:02He explicitly called out the people running the cultural scene, referring to them as not
9:02–9:03warlords.
9:03–9:05Which is a cultural shorthand for famous con men, right?
9:05–9:06Yes, exactly.
9:06–9:07A million rupees.
9:07–9:12To look at that kind of money in a market where artists are literally struggling to survive
9:12–9:16and rejected on pure principle just to defend the integrity of the art form, that tells
9:16–9:20you exactly how deep the rock goes, but also how incredibly passionate the true artists
9:20–9:21are.
9:21–9:22Absolutely.
9:22–9:25But it makes me wonder, you know, why is this cannibalization happening?
9:25–9:30If they have this rich culture, why form a syndicate that actively crushes it?
9:30–9:35Well, it's a phenomenon we see globally when a regional or indigenous art form tries to
9:35–9:38rapidly monetize within a modern capitalist framework.
9:38–9:39The money changes things.
9:39–9:40It always does.
9:40–9:45As soon as regional music tries to transition from a communal folk practice into a product
9:45–9:49to be bought and sold, it fell prey to corporate gatekeepers who only care about
9:49–9:51margins, not heritage.
9:51–9:57Furthermore, Yadav's essay points out a massive looming identity crisis happening at the exact
9:57–10:04same time. There is a heavy overwhelming influence of Bollywood and Boche-Perry styles bleeding
10:04–10:05across the borders.
10:05–10:07Okay, tell us about the Boche-Perry influence.
10:07–10:12The Boche-Perry music, for context, is a neighboring regional style known for being
10:12–10:16very high energy, very commercial, and often heavily synthesized.
10:16–10:18Catchy club music kind of stuff.
10:18–10:24So new Mothilli artists aren't just fighting a syndicate of old gatekeepers. They're fighting an identity crisis
10:24–10:30They're being explicitly told by the market that their authentic nuanced Mothilli flavor doesn't sell
10:30–10:36They're told they need to dilute their music pump up the tempo and sound like a generic Bollywood or
10:37–10:39Bojpuri knockoff just to get a minute of airplay wait
10:39–10:44Hold on I want to push back on this a little bit for it because we're using words like diluting and knockoffs
10:44–10:50But if you're a local musician in Nepal and you're trying to put food on the table for your family, isn't this just basic survival?
10:50–10:51I see what you're saying.
10:51–10:57Like, you don't have the budget to hire a 20-piece live orchestra to record an authentic folk masterpiece.
10:57–11:10If the syndicate controls the traditional routes, and the only way to get hired for a local wedding or a radio spot is to turn out a catchy, synthesized tune that sounds like the latest Bollywood hit, aren't they just doing what they have to do?
11:10–11:16to do, is it fair for these essayists to critique them for just trying to survive?
11:16–11:21That is a highly valid counterargument, and it's the exact tension that defines the modern
11:21–11:22regional artists' dilemma.
11:22–11:23Yeah.
11:23–11:28Using cheap synthesizers and borrowing popular melodies is absolutely a survival tactic in
11:28–11:29an underfunded market.
11:29–11:30Right.
11:30–11:33But the authors and the source material are deeply concerned with the long-term
11:33–11:37existential cost of that survival tactic.
11:37–11:42The question they pose is, if you survive by completely erasing the unique identifying
11:42–11:45markers of your culture, what exactly have you saved?
11:45–11:48Oof, yeah, that's a heavy question.
11:48–11:51You've saved the individual's bank account, perhaps.
11:51–11:53But the culture itself goes bankrupt.
11:53–11:59This exact tension is explored in microscopic, uncompromising detail when the journal transitions
11:59–12:04from these broad industry overviews into reviewing specific modern albums.
12:04–12:05Oh, the reviews?
12:05–12:06Yes.
12:06–12:12are absolutely skating and they perfectly illustrate why this cheap survival method is destroying
12:12–12:13the art form.
12:13–12:18Let's get into those specific critiques because the music criticism in this journal is fascinating.
12:18–12:23The text features a review written by Pradeep Pushpa of an album called Sanahiya which
12:23–12:26is performed by the singer Kunjibihari Mishra.
12:26–12:28Now the reviewer doesn't just attack the whole thing blindly.
12:28–12:30He praises the vocals.
12:30–12:34He says Kunjibihari Mishra's singing is genuinely great and the lyrics are written in this
12:34–12:36intricate Ghazal style.
12:36–12:42And for anyone unfamiliar, a gazale is a poetic form with Arabic origins that is deeply romantic,
12:42–12:46often melancholic, and relies on very nuanced poetic delivery.
12:46–12:51Exactly. So Pushpa says the lyrics and the vocal performance are full of deep emotion.
12:51–12:56But the musical production behind those vocals, it gets absolutely shredded.
12:56–13:02Shredded is an understatement. Pushpa meticulously notes that the album relies almost entirely on
13:02–13:05cheap synthesizers and electronic do-lak machines.
13:05–13:09The Dolac machine. Yeah, the Dolac is a traditional two-headed hand drum
13:09–13:14that provides the heartbeat to so much South Asian folk music. It relies on the human touch,
13:14–13:19the slight variations in strike, the dampening of the skin. It breathes with the song. Right.
13:20–13:26But here it's replaced by a sterile, pre-programmed loop. Pushbell points out the painful lack of
13:26–13:32any live acoustic instruments. There's no real tabla, the more complex tuned hand drums,
13:32–13:33and no life flute.
13:33–13:35It's all just plastic sound.
13:35–13:38The reviewer highlights this massive jarring disconnect.
13:38–13:40You have a singer pouring his absolute soul
13:40–13:44into these complex romantic gazelle lyrics,
13:44–13:46but the backing track sounds like it was generated
13:46–13:47by someone holding down a demo button
13:47–13:49on a discount Casio keyboard.
13:49–13:50That's a perfect way to describe it.
13:50–13:52There's a fundamental disconnect
13:52–13:54between the organic soul of the lyrics
13:54–13:56and the sterile robotic nature of the production.
13:56–13:58It's the audio equivalent of serving
13:58–14:01a beautifully complex slow-cooked heirloom recipe
14:01–14:03on a flimsy styrofoam plate.
14:03–14:04Oh, I love that analogy.
14:04–14:05Yes.
14:05–14:07And the journal makes it clear that this isn't just
14:07–14:10an isolated incident with one unlucky album.
14:10–14:13The text pulls in another heavily critical essay
14:13–14:16by Manish Ka, who writes under the pen name Buabhai.
14:16–14:17Yeah, Buabhai.
14:17–14:21He laments that there is a severe systemic lack
14:21–14:23of original music directors and composers
14:23–14:25in the current Mathili scene.
14:25–14:28Instead of having composers who actually sit down and write
14:28–14:33new music tailored to the specific phonetic nuances and cultural rhythms of the Mothili
14:33–14:35language, singers are just taking a massive shortcut.
14:35–14:36They really are.
14:36–14:41They're literally just taking pre-existing, highly popular Bollywood tunes, stripping
14:41–14:45up the Hindi, and cramming Mothili lyrics into the exact same melodic structure.
14:45–14:48It's a total Frankenstein approach to songwriting.
14:48–14:53It treats the native language not as an instrument with its own inherent musicality,
14:53–14:56but as cheap wallpaper to be pasted over someone else's house.
14:56–14:57That is so depressing.
14:57–15:01And Bolapai points out another technological crutch that is ruining the authenticity, the
15:01–15:07rampant overuse of what he calls detone, which is essentially early auto-tune or pitch correction
15:07–15:08software.
15:08–15:09Love the detone.
15:09–15:10Yeah.
15:10–15:13His argument is that the market is suddenly flooded with new singers who haven't put in
15:13–15:19the years of grueling vocal training or discipline required to sing classical or complex folk
15:19–15:21arrangements on key.
15:21–15:23Right, they just fix it in post.
15:23–15:24Exactly.
15:24–15:26Instead of training, they rely on detone
15:26–15:29to retroactively mask their vocal deficiencies.
15:29–15:31So if we look at the landscape they're describing,
15:31–15:33you have stolen Bollywood melodies,
15:33–15:35played on sheet synthetic drum loops,
15:35–15:38sung by untrained vocalists whose voices
15:38–15:41are being robotically corrected by a computer program.
15:41–15:43That is the grim reality of it.
15:43–15:46And the cultural consequences of this are devastating.
15:46–15:48If we connect this to the bigger picture,
15:48–15:51when music ceases to be a collaborative artistic effort
15:51–15:54involving skilled composers, trained instrumentalists,
15:54–15:55and dedicated singers.
15:55–15:57And instead becomes what?
15:57–15:59It just becomes nothing more than a cheap, fast vehicle
15:59–16:01for a single singer's personal fame.
16:01–16:04The entire cultural ecosystem starts to die.
16:04–16:05Think about the logistics.
16:05–16:08If production companies refused to hire live tabla players
16:08–16:10because a drum machine is cheaper,
16:10–16:12the centuries-old tradition of tabla
16:12–16:14playing in that specific region withers.
16:14–16:15Mm-hmm.
16:15–16:17The masters have no students.
16:17–16:18Because the students know there's no money
16:18–16:20in learning the instrument.
16:20–16:22If you don't hire original composers,
16:22–16:24the unique musical language of the culture
16:24–16:26stops evolving.
16:26–16:28It gets frozen in time, replaced by imitation.
16:28–16:30And what about the audience?
16:30–16:31This is what I was thinking about
16:31–16:32while reading these reviews.
16:32–16:36What happens to a listener's ear over a decade of this?
16:36–16:37That's a great question.
16:37–16:38Right.
16:38–16:40If you, as a listener, are only ever exposed
16:40–16:42to synthesized, recycled tunes
16:42–16:45with mathematically perfect, but emotionally flat,
16:45–16:48auto-tuned vocals, your cultural palate
16:48–16:49completely flattens.
16:49–16:55Absolutely. You literally lose the neurological ability to appreciate the subtle acoustic nuances of
16:55–17:01a live wooden instrument or the micro tones and slight beautiful imperfections of a truly trained
17:01–17:07human voice. It's exactly like only ever eating hyper processed fast food. Eventually your taste
17:07–17:11buds are rewired and you forget what a complex home cooked meal actually tastes like. That is a
17:11–17:17brilliant way to conceptualize it. The cultural palate is being actively flattened by the
17:17–17:20the expediency and commercialization of the syndicate.
17:20–17:24However, the writers in Videa aren't just complaining.
17:24–17:25No, they're definitely looking for answers.
17:25–17:27They aren't just wallowing in despair.
17:27–17:29They actively look for solutions,
17:29–17:31and they highlight specific examples
17:31–17:33where the industry is getting it right.
17:33–17:36They recognize that what is desperately needed
17:36–17:38is a combination of two things,
17:38–17:41establishing foundational cultural standardization
17:41–17:43and proving that high budget,
17:43–17:46high effort, modern production is actually possible.
17:46–17:49which brings us to the essay by Yogendra Pathak,
17:49–17:51who goes by Vyogi.
17:51–17:52He brings up a highly specific
17:52–17:56but incredibly relatable problem regarding standardization.
17:56–17:59And it revolves around the most famous Mathili prayer song,
17:59–18:01Vidhipati's Jai Jai Paravi.
18:01–18:03Jai Jai Paravi is not just a song,
18:03–18:06it's a foundational cultural anthem in Mathila.
18:06–18:08It's a prayer meant to invoke blessings.
18:08–18:10And it's traditionally supposed to be sung
18:10–18:12at the beginning of major public events,
18:12–18:14cultural gatherings and ceremonies.
18:14–18:16Kind of like an invocation.
18:16–18:20Exactly. It's supposed to be the ultimate unifying moment for the community.
18:20–18:23But Viogi points out a deeply chaotic reality.
18:23–18:30Because the culture has never established a standardized official melody, tempo, or rhythm for this specific anthem.
18:30–18:37Every time it's performed at a public event, the hired singer treats it as an opportunity for personal ego-stroking.
18:37–18:44The text describes how these singers will get up on stage and stretch this simple prayer out into an endless performance.
18:44–18:48They add these incredibly complex classical vocal riffs.
18:48–18:49They jump octaves.
18:49–18:50They completely alter the tempo,
18:50–18:53slowing it down to a crawl and then speeding it up.
18:53–18:55And you have to look at the collateral damage
18:55–18:56of that choice.
18:56–18:57What happens to the audience?
18:57–18:58They just stand there.
18:58–18:59Right, the audience who knows the words
18:59–19:02and wants to participate absolutely cannot sing along.
19:02–19:03They're forced to transition
19:03–19:07from being active participants in a communal prayer
19:07–19:09into passive silent spectators
19:09–19:11watching a vocal gymnastics routine.
19:11–19:13I was reading this and I immediately picture
19:13–19:14being in a massive stadium.
19:14–19:17Imagine you're at the Super Bowl or the Olympics.
19:17–19:21The announcer asks everyone to rise for the national anthem.
19:21–19:24You stand up, put your hand over your heart,
19:24–19:26take a breath to sing the first line,
19:26–19:28and the singer on the field decides to launch
19:28–19:33into a 10 minute avant-garde jazz vocal improvisation.
19:33–19:34Whoa, that would be agonizing.
19:34–19:37It would, they're hitting notes you didn't know existed,
19:37–19:40changing the time signature every five seconds.
19:40–19:41You would just be standing there awkwardly,
19:41–19:43shifting your weight, clutching your drink,
19:43–19:44wondering when it's gonna end.
19:44–19:46Yeah, you wouldn't feel unified at all.
19:46–19:47No!
19:47–19:49You wouldn't feel a swell of national pride,
19:49–19:52you'd feel alienated and slightly annoyed.
19:52–19:56Why hasn't a culture with such deep ancient roots
19:56–19:59established a baseline, singable melody
19:59–20:00for its most unifying song?
20:00–20:02That is the exact question
20:02–20:04Vyogi is screaming into the void.
20:04–20:07He argues passionately that the community
20:07–20:10must come together and create a standardized,
20:10–20:13simple accessible tune for Ja Ja Paravi,
20:13–20:16exactly like how a national anthem is structured.
20:16–20:18The priority of this specific song
20:18–20:21needs to be collective participation,
20:21–20:23not individual artistic ego.
20:23–20:26A standardized tune would allow an entire crowd of thousands
20:26–20:29to sing in a massive unified chorus.
20:29–20:31That act of communal singing
20:31–20:34is what fosters a sense of shared identity.
20:34–20:35It makes perfect sense.
20:35–20:37It's a powerful call for the scripture of the music,
20:37–20:39the formal agreed upon rules
20:39–20:42to finally serve the folk, the everyday people,
20:42–20:45rather than just serving the elite performers on stage.
20:45–20:47But the text also goes out of its way to show
20:47–20:50that when the industry does organize itself,
20:50–20:52when it puts real budget, thought,
20:52–20:54and collaborative effort into production,
20:54–20:56the results are phenomenal.
20:56–20:58They aren't doomed to cheap synthesizers forever.
20:58–20:59Not at all.
20:59–21:01We see this vividly in the journal's review
21:01–21:03of a video album called Arapan.
21:03–21:06The review of Arapan, written by Cheresh,
21:06–21:08is presented almost as the antidote
21:08–21:10the cheap synthesized music we just discussed.
21:10–21:15Arapin is a beautifully produced, high-budget DVD containing nine distinct songs.
21:15–21:17And it sounds like they really went all out.
21:17–21:18They did.
21:18–21:20And the production details matter here.
21:20–21:24It wasn't shot against a green screen in a cheap studio, it was filmed on location
21:24–21:27in the stunning hills of Kathmandu.
21:27–21:32Crucially, the producers utilized a professional Nepali film crew, intentionally blending
21:32–21:37the visual aesthetics and technical expertise of the hill cultures with the deeply rooted
21:37–21:39Mothili musical traditions.
21:39–21:42It wasn't just a singer standing in front of a microphone.
21:42–21:45The review details how they use multiple camera angles,
21:45–21:49professional editing techniques, and actual narrative thought to tell a story visually
21:49–21:50while the music played.
21:50–21:51Right.
21:51–21:55The review even enthusiastically notes that the album features the first ever Mothili
21:55–21:56Rocky song.
21:56–21:57Yeah, that's huge.
21:57–22:03Rocky, or Rakshabandhan, is the major festival celebrating the bond and duty between brothers
22:03–22:04and sisters.
22:04–22:11To have that specific cultural moment filmed in a highly relatable cinematic high quality way is a massive milestone.
22:11–22:14Ari Pan serves as a crucial proof of concept.
22:14–22:19It proves that the Mathila music industry is not inherently doomed to low budget imitation.
22:19–22:25When there is genuine collaboration, cross-cultural respect with their Nepali neighbors,
22:25–22:28and a willingness to actually invest financial resources into the art,
22:28–22:32they can produce modern media that honors the ancient traditions
22:32–22:34while looking and sounding completely contemporary.
22:34–22:36It's a blueprint for the future.
22:36–22:36Exactly.
22:36–22:40OK, so RE-PEN represents modern production success.
22:40–22:43It shows the technical heights the industry can reach when it tries.
22:43–22:46But the sources are very clear.
22:46–22:49To truly understand the emotional peak of Missile music,
22:49–22:51to understand the absolute soul of it,
22:51–22:55we have to look away from the modern DVDs and look at the legend.
22:55–22:56The real masters.
22:56–22:56Right.
22:56–22:58The people who didn't just use technology,
22:58–23:00but who masterfully blended raw folk tradition
23:00–23:05with high-disciplined art. We need to talk about Sharda Sinha and then we need to talk
23:05–23:09about the absolute infuriating tragedy of Professor Chen Deshordes-Ha.
23:09–23:15Yeah. Sharda Sinha is a towering monumental figure in this culture. The journal features
23:15–23:22a glowing, deeply reverent review by Ira Malick of Sinha's album, Viva Geet, which translates
23:22–23:27directly to wedding songs. Now, to understand why this album is considered a masterpiece,
23:27–23:32You have to realize it's not just a collection of catchy tunes to play at a reception.
23:32–23:38It is a 16 track, meticulously curated, psychological documentary of the human experience.
23:38–23:43The review highlights how this album literally walks the listener through the entire life
23:43–23:48cycle and the profound emotional roller coaster of a traditional Mothili wedding told entirely
23:48–23:50from the bride's perspective.
23:50–23:51It preserves everything in amber.
23:51–23:55It captures the specific cultural etiquette, the inside jokes shared among the women,
23:55–24:00playful teasing of the groom's guests and ultimately the deep gut-wrenching sorrow of the bidai,
24:00–24:03the moment the bride leaves her childhood home forever.
24:03–24:09And the genius of Sharda Senha, as described in the text, is that her voice literally carries the
24:09–24:15soil of Mithla. She doesn't need heavy synthesizers or detone to convey emotion. Her rigorous
24:15–24:21classical training is perfectly wedded to the raw, unpolished, guttural emotion of the folk
24:21–24:26tradition. When she sings listeners aren't just hearing a song, they're being transported.
24:26–24:32They're reliving their own cultural memories, smelling the incense, feeling the humidity of the monsoon.
24:33–24:39It's the perfect elusive synthesis of high artistic skill and deep grounded folk reality.
24:39–24:44It sounds incredibly beautiful, but the journal doesn't let us sit in that beauty for long.
24:44–24:49It abruptly shifts gears, and the mood of the source material gets incredibly dark,
24:49–24:52highlighting the institutional rot that threatens these exact traditions.
24:52–24:54Yeah, this part is rough.
24:54–24:57We're introduced to a deeply moving and frankly enraging tribute to
24:57–25:01Professor Chandeshwar Jaa, written by Dr. Kailash Kumar Mishra.
25:01–25:05Professor Jaa was an absolute giant in the field of folk music preservation.
25:05–25:07He wasn't an armchair academic, you know?
25:07–25:08No, not at all.
25:08–25:13The text details how he didn't just sit in an air conditioned library analyzing texts.
25:13–25:15He physically traveled from village to village.
25:15–25:19He walked the dusty rural roads of Mithla for years,
25:19–25:20sitting in courtyards,
25:20–25:23and personally collected over 1500
25:23–25:25authentic undocumented folk songs.
25:25–25:271500, that's a life's work.
25:27–25:29He was a singer, a meticulous researcher,
25:29–25:33and a walking breathing archive of a disappearing world.
25:33–25:35But his stories framed as a massive tragedy
25:35–25:37because despite his undeniable genius
25:37–25:39and his tireless work,
25:39–25:41he was tormented, obstructed,
25:41–25:44and ultimately hindered by his own employer.
25:44–25:47He worked at Lulliden Narayan Mifila University,
25:47–25:49an institution explicitly named after the region
25:49–25:51and tasked with preserving its knowledge.
25:51–25:54Yet the text explicitly states that Professor Ja was a victim
25:54–25:57of the most petty, jealous, toxic,
25:57–25:59academic politics imaginable.
25:59–26:00It's infuriating to read.
26:00–26:02His colleagues in the university administration
26:02–26:05driven by fragile egos, professional jealousy,
26:05–26:09and sheer spite actively blocked his research grants.
26:09–26:11They ruined his projects, denied him resources,
26:11–26:13and basically made his daily life miserable.
26:13–26:17Dr. Mishra's tribute is filled with this palpable sorrow
26:17–26:19because Professor Ha was uniquely,
26:19–26:21perhaps supernaturally gifted.
26:21–26:24He had this extraordinary psychological empathy
26:24–26:25that allowed him to sing
26:25–26:27from the emotional perspective of a woman.
26:27–26:28Wait, really?
26:28–26:30Explain that a bit more.
26:30–26:31Yeah, the text specifically mentions
26:31–26:34the type of morning song called the Prati.
26:34–26:36These are songs traditionally sung by women
26:36–26:37at the break of dawn,
26:37–26:39filled with specific female anxieties,
26:39–26:41devotions and perspectives.
26:41–26:44Dr. Mishra notes that when Professor Ha sang a Prati,
26:44–26:47he didn't sound like a man doing an imitation of a woman.
26:47–26:48It wasn't a caricature.
26:48–26:49No, not at all.
26:49–26:52Through sheer empathy and deep cultural understanding,
26:52–26:55he completely blurred the lines between the male performer
26:55–26:58and the internal female psychological experience.
26:58–27:00He channeled the specific emotional resonance
27:00–27:02of the women of Mithila in a way
27:02–27:04that effortlessly bypassed all the rigid gender
27:04–27:05norms of the society.
27:05–27:08He possessed this transcendent empathy
27:08–27:10that allowed him to preserve the female voice
27:10–27:12in a deeply patriarchal society.
27:12–27:15And how did his institution, the university,
27:15–27:18reward him for this monumental cultural service?
27:18–27:19By suffocating him.
27:19–27:20By suffocating him.
27:20–27:22I have to ask you, as the listener,
27:22–27:24to think about how often we see
27:24–27:28this exact dynamic play out in our own lives.
27:28–27:30Institutions that are literally designed,
27:30–27:34funded, and mandated to protect, study, and elevate culture
27:34–27:38end up suffocating their absolute brightest stars
27:38–27:40because of middle management jealousy and fragile egos.
27:40–27:42It happens so often.
27:42–27:43It's exactly like a museum guard,
27:43–27:46entrusted with protecting the world's greatest paintings,
27:46–27:49locking the front doors and throwing away the key
27:49–27:51just so no one else can look at the art,
27:51–27:53purely because the guard wants to feel
27:53–27:55like the most important person in the building.
27:55–27:59That's a devastating indictment of institutional failure,
27:59–28:00but it's completely accurate.
28:00–28:03It shows what happens when the scripture of academia,
28:03–28:05the bureaucracy, the official titles,
28:05–28:07the grant committees, the departmental hierarchies
28:07–28:10becomes more important than the folk reality
28:10–28:13of the actual living art being preserved.
28:13–28:15The culture just bleeds out on the floor.
28:15–28:17And Dr. Mishra makes it painfully clear
28:17–28:20that Professor Jaude died without ever receiving
28:20–28:22the accolades, the national recognition,
28:22–28:25or the institutional support he so richly deserved
28:25–28:29entirely because of this systemic localized jealousy.
28:29–28:32And this theme, this deeply destructive power
28:32–28:35of fragile male egos, systemic injustice,
28:35–28:41and institutional hypocrisy, the source material reveals that this is not just an isolated problem
28:41–28:43in the ivory towers of academia.
28:43–28:44No, it's everywhere.
28:44–28:49It's a dark, pervasive rot in the bedrock of the society itself, which leads us to what
28:49–28:54is, without a doubt, the most harrowing, difficult, and sociologically dense essay in this entire
28:54–28:55journal.
28:55–28:57It really is a profound shift in tone.
28:57–29:02I think a clear content warning is appropriate here as we are going to discuss systemic
29:02–29:04domestic abuse and societal cruelty.
29:04–29:05Definitely.
29:05–29:11The text features a deeply unsettling sociological piece analyzing a very specific tragic societal
29:11–29:14role in mythola, the peritacta.
29:14–29:15This translates to the abandoned wife.
29:15–29:20Now we need to be clear, this is not about divorce in the modern legal mediated sense.
29:20–29:22Right, there's no mediation here.
29:22–29:27This is about a deeply patriarchal rigid society that allows men to simply discard
29:27–29:33their wives, forcing these abandoned women to live a life that the author explicitly
29:33–29:35describes as being worse than widowhood.
29:35–29:37It is a brutal, unflinching read.
29:37–29:42The author argues that when a woman is widowed by the death of her husband, society at least
29:42–29:44provides a recognized script for her grief.
29:44–29:49There are official rituals, there's a recognized status, and while it's a highly restricted,
29:49–29:53often oppressive life, there is a baseline of communal sympathy.
29:53–29:57But the peridacta, the woman whose husband simply packs up and discards her while he's
29:57–30:03still alive, legally married but entirely absent, she carries an immense, crushing
30:03–30:08social stigma. The community views her with deep suspicion. She's invariably blamed for
30:08–30:12her own abandonment like what did she do to make him leave. And she's treated as an absolute
30:12–30:13pariah.
30:13–30:17And the brilliance of this essay is that the author traces this modern cruelty all the
30:17–30:19way back to the culture's foundational myths.
30:19–30:21This is where it gets really dark.
30:21–30:27This is where the sociological critique becomes incredibly razor sharp. The essay meticulously
30:27–30:31unpacks the historical and mythological roots of this behavior. It brings up a
30:31–30:37Bahalia who in the epics was tricked and then turned to stone as a punishment, abandoned
30:37–30:42to the elements. It brings up Sita, the ultimate symbol of female devotion, who was famously
30:42–30:48abandoned in the forest by Rama despite proving her absolute purity through a trial by fire.
30:48–30:53And it brings up a historical figure named Farati. Farati was the wife of a revered
30:53–30:58ancient philosopher named Vachaspati. The text details how Vachaspati essentially used
30:58–31:03his wife's labor, care, and silent devotion for years just so he could have the peace and
31:03–31:06sustenance required to write his famous treatises.
31:06–31:07And then what does he do?
31:07–31:10The moment he finished his great work, he abandoned her.
31:10–31:14The author's core argument is that these aren't just old stories, harmless myths, or
31:14–31:15ancient history.
31:15–31:16They are structural blueprints.
31:16–31:18They're teaching tools.
31:18–31:19Yes.
31:19–31:25The Modern Patriarchal Society uses these revered texts and stories to implicitly justify
31:25–31:29and normalize the modern exploitation and abandonment of women.
31:29–31:33The logic is, well, if the gods and the great philosophers did it,
31:33–31:35why can't a modern man?
31:35–31:39The essay is arguing that the scripture is actively knowingly weaponized against
31:39–31:43the folk. And to prove that this isn't just an abstract historical theory,
31:43–31:47the author provides these incredibly chilling, vivid,
31:47–31:48real-life anecdotes.
31:48–31:50Yeah, these anecdotes are tough to read.
31:50–31:53These stories prove that this cruelty is happening right now, today,
31:53–31:56among the so-called educated progressive elite.
31:56–31:58The first anecdote the author provides
31:58–32:01involves a famous, wealthy, highly regarded
32:01–32:02modern literary man.
32:02–32:05The community views him as an intellectual leader.
32:05–32:07This man deliberately goes out of his way
32:07–32:09to marry a traditional, uneducated girl
32:09–32:11from a rural village.
32:11–32:12Then when she's trapped in his home,
32:12–32:15he brutally abuses her, both physically and mentally,
32:15–32:17claiming she isn't modern or sophisticated enough
32:17–32:19to fit his elevated lifestyle.
32:19–32:22He forces her out of his home, entirely severing support,
32:22–32:23turning her into a peritacta.
32:23–32:27And what makes this anecdote so utterly insidious,
32:27–32:30so hypocritical, is that this exact same man
32:30–32:33then goes on to write award-winning, progressive literature,
32:33–32:36championing women's rights and feminism.
32:36–32:37You've got to be kidding me.
32:37–32:39And his intellectual peers,
32:39–32:41the people who grant him these awards,
32:41–32:44cheer him on, fully knowing exactly
32:44–32:45what he did to his own wife.
32:45–32:47Wait, is this just the ultimate PR spin?
32:47–32:49Because looking at it from the outside,
32:49–32:55It feels like this man is using his status, his literary awards, his progressive vocabulary,
32:55–32:57his wealth as an impenetrable shield.
32:57–32:58Exactly.
32:58–33:02He gets to write feminist poetry on stage, get applauded by high society as a visionary,
33:02–33:06and then go home and act like an absolute tyrant behind closed doors.
33:06–33:09And the society allows it because he says the right words in public.
33:09–33:10It's disgusting.
33:10–33:12I want to be very clear to the listener here.
33:12–33:16We are looking at these sociological critiques exactly as the author laid them out.
33:16–33:21We are impartially reporting the text to understand how this specific society operates.
33:21–33:26But the author is shining a glaring, uncompromising spotlight on these individuals and the hypocrisy
33:26–33:28of the society that enables them.
33:28–33:33And the text provides a second anecdote that is just as cold, proving it isn't just
33:33–33:36the literary elite, it spans the corporate world as well.
33:36–33:40The author describes the corporate manager, a man of means and modern education, who
33:40–33:44marries an innocent, simple woman.
33:44–33:47After merely seven months of marriage, he abandons her entirely.
33:47–33:48The reason.
33:48–33:53Simply so we can turn around and marry her slightly younger, supposedly more attractive sister.
33:53–33:55That is just so cruel.
33:55–33:59And the most damning, horrific part of this story isn't just the man's actions.
33:59–34:01It's the societal reaction.
34:01–34:05The text emphasizes that the man's family, his parents, and the broader society around
34:05–34:07him fully support his cruelty.
34:07–34:09They facilitate the second marriage.
34:09–34:10They help him do it.
34:10–34:11Yeah.
34:11–34:16is left with absolutely nothing, her reputation in life effectively ruined by societal dictates,
34:16–34:19while the man suffers zero social or professional consequences.
34:19–34:24The hypocrisy is absolutely staggering. The very men who write the rules, who define the
34:24–34:30scripture of modern success, who hold the power in academia, literature, and corporate life,
34:30–34:35are the ones perpetrating the most archaic, devastating forms of abuse, and they use
34:35–34:37the ancient myths as their permission slip.
34:37–34:43Which brings us to a vital existential crossroads for the culture. I mean, if the official
34:43–34:48upper-crest society, with all its wealth, its literary awards, its universities, and its foundational
34:48–34:55scriptures, is this hypocritical and this inherently dangerous for women, how do women actually survive?
34:55–34:57That's the real question.
34:57–35:02If the rulebook is designed to crush them, where do they find actual practical lived wisdom
35:02–35:05to navigate a world that is so heavily stacked against them?
35:05–35:09That is the perfect pivot because the journal doesn't just outline the oppression. It actually
35:09–35:14answers that exact question. It does. And the answer is found in the final major theme we're
35:14–35:20exploring today, subversive folk wisdom. The text provides this deeply fascinating, almost
35:20–35:25secretive cultural analysis of the Matthew Shravani Festival. What's fascinating here is that the
35:25–35:31Matthew Shravani Festival is a highly specific cultural event that takes place over 15 days during
35:31–35:33during the heavy monsoon season.
35:33–35:35It involves daily rituals,
35:35–35:37and it's primarily observed by newlywed brides.
35:37–35:39Okay, so just the new brides.
35:39–35:41Right, the core activity of this festival
35:41–35:43involves older married women
35:43–35:45gathering the young brides together
35:45–35:49to tell them a series of traditional oral stories.
35:49–35:50But the author of this essay
35:50–35:51points out something extraordinary
35:51–35:54about the content of these specific stories.
35:54–35:56They focus heavily on the goddess Gaudi,
35:56–35:58but this is not the perfect, submissive,
35:58–36:04sanitized eternally devoted gowri that you find in the official patriarchal scripture.
36:04–36:09Not at all. The stories told during Matusharani depict the goddess gowri as completely flawed,
36:09–36:13incredibly fiery, and fiercely human. Yeah, very human.
36:13–36:19The essay outlines how, in these specific folk tales, gowri is shown actively learning witchcraft
36:19–36:24and dark magic out of sheer jealousy. She is depicted trespassing and stealing egg plants
36:24–36:28from a farmer's field because she is hungry and wants them. I love that detail.
36:28–36:34Right. And she's shown playfully, boldly flirting with a lowly boatman who, in the twist of the story,
36:34–36:38actually turns out to be her husband, Lord Shiva, in disguise, testing her fidelity.
36:39–36:43The brilliance of this oral tradition requires a deep dive into human psychology.
36:43–36:48I mean, why would these older, respected women intentionally spend 15 days telling newlywed
36:48–36:52bride's stories about her revered, divine goddess behaving badly?
36:52–36:55Why tell them stories of jealousy, theft, and flirting?
36:55–37:01The essay argues that this is a highly calculated underground syllabus of subversive feminist
37:01–37:05wisdom. The older women know exactly what the scriptural rules of the outside society
37:05–37:11demand. They know society demands that a wife be absolutely perfect, utterly submissive,
37:11–37:14silently self-sacrificing, and devoid of personal desire.
37:14–37:16And they know how dangerous that is.
37:16–37:20And they know, as we saw with the Perichakta essay, that this is an impossible fatal
37:20–37:24standard that men will inevitably weaponize against women to discard them.
37:24–37:31So by portraying the goddess Gaudi, the ultimate divine feminine, as flawed as someone who
37:31–37:36makes mistakes, gets jealous, breaks the rules, gets angry and has independent desires, these
37:36–37:42older women are essentially providing a masterclass in practical, real-world marital survival.
37:42–37:47They're looking at these terrified young brides and saying, look, even the divine mother
37:47–37:49of the universe isn't perfect.
37:49–37:50She gets jealous.
37:50–37:51She makes mistakes.
37:51–37:56Do not let this society or your new husband crush you with impossible standards of perfection.
37:56–37:57Precisely.
37:57–37:59It is about emotional survival.
37:59–38:02Take the story of Gauri flirting with the boatman.
38:02–38:07When it's revealed that the boatman is Shiva testing her, it leads to a complex confrontation
38:07–38:09and a dialogue between husband and wife.
38:09–38:12The lesson hidden in that story isn't about blind obedience.
38:12–38:16It's about navigating boundaries, dealing with marital temptation, and understanding that
38:16–38:21trust in a marriage is a shared, constantly negotiated responsibility.
38:21–38:25is not a scriptural mandate of blind one-sided female obedience.
38:25–38:29This folk wisdom deeply acknowledges human psychology.
38:29–38:34It's realistic, it's forgiving, and it's deeply aware of the messy nature of human relationships,
38:34–38:41which stands in stark, subversive contrast to the rigid, punitive rules of the official
38:41–38:42patriarchal scripture.
38:42–38:48It's literally a secret underground syllabus for surviving a patriarchal marriage passed
38:48–38:53down orally from generation to generation of women, completely hidden under the unassailable
38:53–38:58guise of a pious religious festival. The men think the women are just praying, but the women
38:58–39:01are actually teaching each other how to survive the men.
39:01–39:02It's incredibly empowering.
39:02–39:07It is incredibly empowering. But there's a massive caveat here that we have to address.
39:07–39:11The author raises a critical heart-breaking question at the very end of this piece.
39:11–39:15If this Mudhoo Shravani festival is so profoundly empowering and its lessons are so deeply
39:15–39:21realistic and vital for a woman's psychological survival, why hasn't it spread?
39:21–39:22Yeah, that's the tragedy.
39:22–39:26The text notes that this festival has remained strictly isolated to the Brahmin cast,
39:26–39:32the upper cast in Mithila. Why wouldn't these women share this incredible tool for female
39:32–39:36empowerment with all communities across all castes?
39:36–39:41That is the tragic paradox that the author leaves us to wrestle with. It perfectly illustrates how
39:41–39:45intersecting systems of oppression function in reality. The Brahmin women have
39:45–39:49brilliantly carved out a safe space to subvert the patriarchy through these
39:49–39:55folktales. But the deeply ingrained rigid rules of the caste system, the ultimate
39:55–39:59scripture of social hierarchy, prevent them from sharing that vital survival
39:59–40:04knowledge with women of other lower castes. Class and caste barriers act as
40:04–40:09impenetrable walls containing the wisdom and preventing a broader unified
40:09–40:13cultural evolution. So they subvert one system but uphold another. They subvert
40:13–40:17the patriarchy but they uphold the caste system. It proves that even in moments of
40:17–40:21brilliant subversion the scripture still finds a way to divide the folk. Wow.
40:21–40:24Okay, let's take a deep breath and zoom out because we have covered an
40:24–40:28incredible amount of ground in this deep dive into issue 20 of the Vadea e-journal.
40:28–40:31We really have. We started by looking at the messy digital struggles of
40:31–40:35Mathillian musicians in Nepal fighting off monopoly syndicates and the
40:35–40:39desperate allure of cheap synthesizers just to survive.
40:39–40:42We looked at the tragic reality of academic jealousy,
40:42–40:44suffocating brilliant empathetic minds
40:44–40:47like Professor Sondeshwar Haar.
40:47–40:49We faced the harrowing hypocritical reality
40:49–40:51of the abandoned wives, the Parisiachta,
40:51–40:54and the modern men who use ancient myth
40:54–40:55to justify their cruelty.
40:55–40:57And finally, we uncovered the secret,
40:57–41:00subversive feminist wisdom hidden in the monsoon
41:00–41:02festival stories of Mother Trevonni
41:02–41:05and the caste barriers that keep that wisdom locked away.
41:05–41:08When you synthesize all of these incredibly diverse texts,
41:08–41:11it connects directly to everyone listening right now,
41:11–41:13regardless of your specific cultural background
41:13–41:14or where you live.
41:14–41:17Hell, because we all navigate this exact same tension
41:17–41:19every single day of our lives.
41:19–41:22We all live caught between the scripture of our lives,
41:22–41:24the official rules, the societal expectations,
41:24–41:26the corporate ladders, the religious dogmas,
41:26–41:29the Instagram perfect standards we're told to follow,
41:29–41:31and the folk reality of how we actually survive,
41:31–41:37How we adapt, how we subvert those impossible rules, and how we manage to find joy and identity
41:37–41:40in the messy reality of being human.
41:40–41:41That is beautifully said.
41:41–41:46And as we wrap up this deep dive, I want to leave you, the listener, with one final,
41:46–41:48provocative thought to mull over.
41:48–41:52It's inspired by a very quiet set of diary entries found in the text, written by a man
41:52–41:53named Ravi Bhushan Pathak.
41:53–41:54Oh, Pathak's diary.
41:54–41:55Yes.
41:55–41:58In his diary, Pathak writes about a psychological trap that I think almost all of us fall
41:58–41:59into.
41:59–42:05He notes how we constantly, unconsciously project our own regional, cultural, and personal insecurities
42:05–42:07onto our local artists.
42:07–42:12He writes that we treat our musicians, our writers, our local heroes exactly like sports
42:12–42:13teams.
42:13–42:14Yeah, we attach our ego to them.
42:14–42:20If a local Mothilli singer wins on a national stage, we feel like our region wins.
42:20–42:21Like we win.
42:21–42:25If they lose or if they're ignored, we take it as a personal insult.
42:25–42:26We feel like we lose.
42:26–42:30And it makes you wonder, when you are listening to a local artist, or when you're aggressively
42:30–42:37championing a hometown hero in any field, are you really truly appreciating their art for
42:37–42:39the vulnerable thing that it is?
42:39–42:43Or are you just desperately looking for a validation of your own identity?
42:43–42:47Are we actually supporting the artist, or are we just using them as a proxy to prove
42:47–42:49our own worth to the rest of the world?
42:49–42:53It's a profound question about the nature of fandom and cultural pride.
42:53–42:54Exactly.
42:54–42:58It's something to seriously think about the next time you find yourself blindly rooting
42:58–42:59for the hometown kid.
42:59–43:03Remember that broken x-ray machine we talked about at the very beginning of this conversation?
43:03–43:05Society isn't binary.
43:05–43:06Culture is not a clean break.
43:06–43:10The next time you look at your own culture, your own traditions, or your own hometown,
43:10–43:13don't just look for the clean, white, easily diagnosable lines.
43:13–43:14Look for the mud.
43:14–43:15Look for the mud.
43:15–43:20Look for the messy fusions, the hypocrisies, the cheap synthesizers trying to survive,
43:20–43:23and the secret subversive wisdom hiding in plain sight.
43:23–43:25Thanks for joining us on this deep dive.

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यूआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआआ� We want our problems to be easily categorized. We really do. But then, then you step out of the hospital and into the world of culture and identity and sociology and suddenly that X-ray machine is completely malfunctioning. Oh, totally. The image is just a blur. Right. The landscape we're looking at today isn't medical, obviously, but the diagnostic muddy waters are exactly the same. We're looking at an ancient culture trying desperately to diagnose its own modern identity and there are absolutely no clean breaks to be found. is when a deeply rooted centuries old culture collides head on with the hyper fast, relentless machinery of the digital age, it doesn't just fracture, it mutates. Mutates, yeah. It quits these bizarre new fusions. It's incredibly messy. I mean, you're essentially watching a living, breathing organism trying to adapt to an alien environment in real time. And that is exactly the collision we're exploring today. So welcome to the deep dive. I want you, listening right now, to picture something with me. Imagine an incredibly rich linguistic and cultural tradition known as Mathili. It's rooted in the Mathila region, which is this fascinating geographic and cultural space that spans across parts of India and Nepal. Yeah. And we're talking about a heritage built on epic poetry, profound philosophy, and these intricate folk traditions that have literally been passed down orally and on palm leaf manuscripts for centuries. Yes, centuries of history. Now imagine taking all of that ancient heavy cultural weight and slamming right into the dial-up internet era of the early 2000s. It's just a stunning visual contrast. You have the rhythm of rural agrarian life and ancient scriptures suddenly being digitized into like HTML coding and MP3 files. It's an evolutionary leap happening in a fraction of the time it normally takes a culture to shift. Precisely. And out of that specific chaotic collision, an internet archive was actually born way back in the year 2000. It was a pioneering effort that eventually evolved into an e-journal called Videha. And today, we're diving deep into a massive stack of source material from an entire issue of this journal, Issue 20 specifically. And it is massive. It's a staggering comprehensive compilation of methodically prose, poetry, cultural critique, and sociological analysis. It really is. So our mission for this deep dive to explore exactly how this culture navigates this messy transition into the modern world. We're going to examine how they grapple with the commercialization of their music, the remarkably dark and petty politics of their academic institutions, and some deeply unsettling societal hypocrisies that still exist today. But crucially, we're also going to look at how the absolute soul of their culture is preserved through these incredible subversive, almost secret folk traditions. Yeah, and the underlying current running through all of these different essays and reviews and diary entries in issue 20 Is this constant churning battle between two specific forces? Okay, lay it out for us. So on one side. Mm-hmm. You have what we can call scripture And I'm using that word in the broadest sense here to mean the rigid formalized official rules and hierarchies that society tries to impose right the official rule book exactly and on the other side And you have the folk reality that's the fluid, messy, adaptive and highly practical way that everyday people actually survive and live their lives on the ground. The tension between the ideal and the real. And I want to say to you listening, whether you're a student of cultural anthropology, a musicology nerd, or just someone who is insanely curious about how ancient human traditions survived the digital meat grinder, this collection of essays is an absolute goldmine. Oh, absolutely. It serves as a mirror reflecting the exact same cultural growing pains that happen everywhere, just viewed through a very specific vivid lens. So let's unpack this. The early pages of the journal are heavily dominated by the digital frontier of Mussolini music. We get this sweeping look at the commercialization and the frantic attempt at preservation in this new era. Music is almost always the canary in the coal mine for broader cultural shifts, you know? Mm-hmm, always. material, there's a highly detailed breakdown provided by Gagendra Thakur. He documents the entire landscape of Mithili CD and DVD albums hitting the market at that specific time. Right, the actual physical media. Yeah, he lists the artists, the specific albums, and the recording companies, names like Ganga Cassettes and the T-Series that were mass producing this content. But the very first thing Thakur notes, which acts as a glaring red flag for the entire culture, is the absolute lack of children's albums. Yeah, I remember reading that he explicitly points out that there is a total void. Right. Which is wild, because this is a region with an incredibly rich, centuries-old tradition of folk songs, lullabies, and communal music meant to be sung at home. Yet, when it comes to producing modern physical media, the CDs and DVDs that people are actually buying and putting into their players, there is literally nothing for the youth. And we really have to pause here, because the implications of that are massive. I mean what happens to a language to a distinct cultural identity when its children are not given media in their native tongue? They just don't engage with it. Exactly. If the entire digital landscape, every CD in the local shop, every DVD, every early digital download is entirely dominated by adult themes, commercial pop, or high-level religious chants, the children are implicitly absorbing a very dangerous lesson. They're being taught that their native language is a historical artifact. Yes. Artifact meant only for adults, not a living breathing playground for them to explore. I mean, Taghurt does mention a few plays and small educational initiatives, but the commercial music industry, the entity with the actual reach and power, has completely abandoned the youth. Which feels like cultural self-sabotage, honestly. And that self-sabotaging behavior bleeds directly into Dinesh Yadav's essay, which focuses specifically on the state of Methili music in the Nepal region. Yeah, that essay is intense. It really is. The sources paint a picture of a geographic area that is practically dripping with musical heritage, but the actual industry is suffocating. It's being choked by hypercommercialization, intense nepotism, and what Yadav literally describes as a syndicate mentality. And the term syndicate is used very deliberately there. The essay reveals that a very small tightly knit handful of powerful individuals have basically monopolized the entire infrastructure. Wow. control the radio airwaves, they control the distribution, and they control the regional awards, it's the ultimate gatekeeping mechanism. They only promote their own people, their own preferred styles, and they completely freeze out new authentic talent. And you have to remember the context of the market here, right? Because the regional market is relatively small compared to massive natural industries. If you get blocked by the syndicate, you have nowhere else to go. You're just done. Exactly. You can't just bypass them and upload to a million followers back then. radio and these specific cultural awards dictate an artist's entire livelihood. And the text gives this wildly illustrative almost cinematic example of this corruption playing out in real time with the Vigipati awards in Nepal. Oh I love this part. Set the stage for us. Okay so for context Vigipati is the legendary cultural icon and poet of Missila. His name carries immense sacred weight. So you have this award a million rupee award which is a a life-changing amount of money for a regional artist. Right. Huge money. It was a sensibly meant to honor the greatest singers in the culture. But due to sheer, unabashed cronyism, the syndicate decided to give this massive singing award to a translator. A translator, not a singer. Exactly. A decision that naturally caused an absolute uproar in the community. The text highlights the reaction of the legendary Mathili singer named Muraleedhar. The journal describes Muraleedhar as a pioneer, someone whose raw contribution to Mathili film music and culture is virtually unmatched. And how did he react? When this award was announced, Mjodlidhar essentially staged a one-man rebellion. He boldly and publicly rejected this million rupee award in protest of the corruption and the blatant disrespect shown to the actual working musicians. Wait, he was offered the award alongside the translator or later? He rejected the entire premise and structure of the awards once the corruption became clear. He didn't just quietly decline either. He explicitly called out the people running the cultural scene, referring to them as not warlords. Which is a cultural shorthand for famous con men, right? Yes, exactly. A million rupees. To look at that kind of money in a market where artists are literally struggling to survive and rejected on pure principle just to defend the integrity of the art form, that tells you exactly how deep the rock goes, but also how incredibly passionate the true artists are. Absolutely. But it makes me wonder, you know, why is this cannibalization happening? If they have this rich culture, why form a syndicate that actively crushes it? Well, it's a phenomenon we see globally when a regional or indigenous art form tries to rapidly monetize within a modern capitalist framework. The money changes things. It always does. As soon as regional music tries to transition from a communal folk practice into a product to be bought and sold, it fell prey to corporate gatekeepers who only care about margins, not heritage. Furthermore, Yadav's essay points out a massive looming identity crisis happening at the exact same time. There is a heavy overwhelming influence of Bollywood and Boche-Perry styles bleeding across the borders. Okay, tell us about the Boche-Perry influence. The Boche-Perry music, for context, is a neighboring regional style known for being very high energy, very commercial, and often heavily synthesized. Catchy club music kind of stuff. So new Mothilli artists aren't just fighting a syndicate of old gatekeepers. They're fighting an identity crisis They're being explicitly told by the market that their authentic nuanced Mothilli flavor doesn't sell They're told they need to dilute their music pump up the tempo and sound like a generic Bollywood or Bojpuri knockoff just to get a minute of airplay wait Hold on I want to push back on this a little bit for it because we're using words like diluting and knockoffs But if you're a local musician in Nepal and you're trying to put food on the table for your family, isn't this just basic survival? I see what you're saying. Like, you don't have the budget to hire a 20-piece live orchestra to record an authentic folk masterpiece. If the syndicate controls the traditional routes, and the only way to get hired for a local wedding or a radio spot is to turn out a catchy, synthesized tune that sounds like the latest Bollywood hit, aren't they just doing what they have to do? to do, is it fair for these essayists to critique them for just trying to survive? That is a highly valid counterargument, and it's the exact tension that defines the modern regional artists' dilemma. Yeah. Using cheap synthesizers and borrowing popular melodies is absolutely a survival tactic in an underfunded market. Right. But the authors and the source material are deeply concerned with the long-term existential cost of that survival tactic. The question they pose is, if you survive by completely erasing the unique identifying markers of your culture, what exactly have you saved? Oof, yeah, that's a heavy question. You've saved the individual's bank account, perhaps. But the culture itself goes bankrupt. This exact tension is explored in microscopic, uncompromising detail when the journal transitions from these broad industry overviews into reviewing specific modern albums. Oh, the reviews? Yes. are absolutely skating and they perfectly illustrate why this cheap survival method is destroying the art form. Let's get into those specific critiques because the music criticism in this journal is fascinating. The text features a review written by Pradeep Pushpa of an album called Sanahiya which is performed by the singer Kunjibihari Mishra. Now the reviewer doesn't just attack the whole thing blindly. He praises the vocals. He says Kunjibihari Mishra's singing is genuinely great and the lyrics are written in this intricate Ghazal style. And for anyone unfamiliar, a gazale is a poetic form with Arabic origins that is deeply romantic, often melancholic, and relies on very nuanced poetic delivery. Exactly. So Pushpa says the lyrics and the vocal performance are full of deep emotion. But the musical production behind those vocals, it gets absolutely shredded. Shredded is an understatement. Pushpa meticulously notes that the album relies almost entirely on cheap synthesizers and electronic do-lak machines. The Dolac machine. Yeah, the Dolac is a traditional two-headed hand drum that provides the heartbeat to so much South Asian folk music. It relies on the human touch, the slight variations in strike, the dampening of the skin. It breathes with the song. Right. But here it's replaced by a sterile, pre-programmed loop. Pushbell points out the painful lack of any live acoustic instruments. There's no real tabla, the more complex tuned hand drums, and no life flute. It's all just plastic sound. The reviewer highlights this massive jarring disconnect. You have a singer pouring his absolute soul into these complex romantic gazelle lyrics, but the backing track sounds like it was generated by someone holding down a demo button on a discount Casio keyboard. That's a perfect way to describe it. There's a fundamental disconnect between the organic soul of the lyrics and the sterile robotic nature of the production. It's the audio equivalent of serving a beautifully complex slow-cooked heirloom recipe on a flimsy styrofoam plate. Oh, I love that analogy. Yes. And the journal makes it clear that this isn't just an isolated incident with one unlucky album. The text pulls in another heavily critical essay by Manish Ka, who writes under the pen name Buabhai. Yeah, Buabhai. He laments that there is a severe systemic lack of original music directors and composers in the current Mathili scene. Instead of having composers who actually sit down and write new music tailored to the specific phonetic nuances and cultural rhythms of the Mothili language, singers are just taking a massive shortcut. They really are. They're literally just taking pre-existing, highly popular Bollywood tunes, stripping up the Hindi, and cramming Mothili lyrics into the exact same melodic structure. It's a total Frankenstein approach to songwriting. It treats the native language not as an instrument with its own inherent musicality, but as cheap wallpaper to be pasted over someone else's house. That is so depressing. And Bolapai points out another technological crutch that is ruining the authenticity, the rampant overuse of what he calls detone, which is essentially early auto-tune or pitch correction software. Love the detone. Yeah. His argument is that the market is suddenly flooded with new singers who haven't put in the years of grueling vocal training or discipline required to sing classical or complex folk arrangements on key. Right, they just fix it in post. Exactly. Instead of training, they rely on detone to retroactively mask their vocal deficiencies. So if we look at the landscape they're describing, you have stolen Bollywood melodies, played on sheet synthetic drum loops, sung by untrained vocalists whose voices are being robotically corrected by a computer program. That is the grim reality of it. And the cultural consequences of this are devastating. If we connect this to the bigger picture, when music ceases to be a collaborative artistic effort involving skilled composers, trained instrumentalists, and dedicated singers. And instead becomes what? It just becomes nothing more than a cheap, fast vehicle for a single singer's personal fame. The entire cultural ecosystem starts to die. Think about the logistics. If production companies refused to hire live tabla players because a drum machine is cheaper, the centuries-old tradition of tabla playing in that specific region withers. Mm-hmm. The masters have no students. Because the students know there's no money in learning the instrument. If you don't hire original composers, the unique musical language of the culture stops evolving. It gets frozen in time, replaced by imitation. And what about the audience? This is what I was thinking about while reading these reviews. What happens to a listener's ear over a decade of this? That's a great question. Right. If you, as a listener, are only ever exposed to synthesized, recycled tunes with mathematically perfect, but emotionally flat, auto-tuned vocals, your cultural palate completely flattens. Absolutely. You literally lose the neurological ability to appreciate the subtle acoustic nuances of a live wooden instrument or the micro tones and slight beautiful imperfections of a truly trained human voice. It's exactly like only ever eating hyper processed fast food. Eventually your taste buds are rewired and you forget what a complex home cooked meal actually tastes like. That is a brilliant way to conceptualize it. The cultural palate is being actively flattened by the the expediency and commercialization of the syndicate. However, the writers in Videa aren't just complaining. No, they're definitely looking for answers. They aren't just wallowing in despair. They actively look for solutions, and they highlight specific examples where the industry is getting it right. They recognize that what is desperately needed is a combination of two things, establishing foundational cultural standardization and proving that high budget, high effort, modern production is actually possible. which brings us to the essay by Yogendra Pathak, who goes by Vyogi. He brings up a highly specific but incredibly relatable problem regarding standardization. And it revolves around the most famous Mathili prayer song, Vidhipati's Jai Jai Paravi. Jai Jai Paravi is not just a song, it's a foundational cultural anthem in Mathila. It's a prayer meant to invoke blessings. And it's traditionally supposed to be sung at the beginning of major public events, cultural gatherings and ceremonies. Kind of like an invocation. Exactly. It's supposed to be the ultimate unifying moment for the community. But Viogi points out a deeply chaotic reality. Because the culture has never established a standardized official melody, tempo, or rhythm for this specific anthem. Every time it's performed at a public event, the hired singer treats it as an opportunity for personal ego-stroking. The text describes how these singers will get up on stage and stretch this simple prayer out into an endless performance. They add these incredibly complex classical vocal riffs. They jump octaves. They completely alter the tempo, slowing it down to a crawl and then speeding it up. And you have to look at the collateral damage of that choice. What happens to the audience? They just stand there. Right, the audience who knows the words and wants to participate absolutely cannot sing along. They're forced to transition from being active participants in a communal prayer into passive silent spectators watching a vocal gymnastics routine. I was reading this and I immediately picture being in a massive stadium. Imagine you're at the Super Bowl or the Olympics. The announcer asks everyone to rise for the national anthem. You stand up, put your hand over your heart, take a breath to sing the first line, and the singer on the field decides to launch into a 10 minute avant-garde jazz vocal improvisation. Whoa, that would be agonizing. It would, they're hitting notes you didn't know existed, changing the time signature every five seconds. You would just be standing there awkwardly, shifting your weight, clutching your drink, wondering when it's gonna end. Yeah, you wouldn't feel unified at all. No! You wouldn't feel a swell of national pride, you'd feel alienated and slightly annoyed. Why hasn't a culture with such deep ancient roots established a baseline, singable melody for its most unifying song? That is the exact question Vyogi is screaming into the void. He argues passionately that the community must come together and create a standardized, simple accessible tune for Ja Ja Paravi, exactly like how a national anthem is structured. The priority of this specific song needs to be collective participation, not individual artistic ego. A standardized tune would allow an entire crowd of thousands to sing in a massive unified chorus. That act of communal singing is what fosters a sense of shared identity. It makes perfect sense. It's a powerful call for the scripture of the music, the formal agreed upon rules to finally serve the folk, the everyday people, rather than just serving the elite performers on stage. But the text also goes out of its way to show that when the industry does organize itself, when it puts real budget, thought, and collaborative effort into production, the results are phenomenal. They aren't doomed to cheap synthesizers forever. Not at all. We see this vividly in the journal's review of a video album called Arapan. The review of Arapan, written by Cheresh, is presented almost as the antidote the cheap synthesized music we just discussed. Arapin is a beautifully produced, high-budget DVD containing nine distinct songs. And it sounds like they really went all out. They did. And the production details matter here. It wasn't shot against a green screen in a cheap studio, it was filmed on location in the stunning hills of Kathmandu. Crucially, the producers utilized a professional Nepali film crew, intentionally blending the visual aesthetics and technical expertise of the hill cultures with the deeply rooted Mothili musical traditions. It wasn't just a singer standing in front of a microphone. The review details how they use multiple camera angles, professional editing techniques, and actual narrative thought to tell a story visually while the music played. Right. The review even enthusiastically notes that the album features the first ever Mothili Rocky song. Yeah, that's huge. Rocky, or Rakshabandhan, is the major festival celebrating the bond and duty between brothers and sisters. To have that specific cultural moment filmed in a highly relatable cinematic high quality way is a massive milestone. Ari Pan serves as a crucial proof of concept. It proves that the Mathila music industry is not inherently doomed to low budget imitation. When there is genuine collaboration, cross-cultural respect with their Nepali neighbors, and a willingness to actually invest financial resources into the art, they can produce modern media that honors the ancient traditions while looking and sounding completely contemporary. It's a blueprint for the future. Exactly. OK, so RE-PEN represents modern production success. It shows the technical heights the industry can reach when it tries. But the sources are very clear. To truly understand the emotional peak of Missile music, to understand the absolute soul of it, we have to look away from the modern DVDs and look at the legend. The real masters. Right. The people who didn't just use technology, but who masterfully blended raw folk tradition with high-disciplined art. We need to talk about Sharda Sinha and then we need to talk about the absolute infuriating tragedy of Professor Chen Deshordes-Ha. Yeah. Sharda Sinha is a towering monumental figure in this culture. The journal features a glowing, deeply reverent review by Ira Malick of Sinha's album, Viva Geet, which translates directly to wedding songs. Now, to understand why this album is considered a masterpiece, You have to realize it's not just a collection of catchy tunes to play at a reception. It is a 16 track, meticulously curated, psychological documentary of the human experience. The review highlights how this album literally walks the listener through the entire life cycle and the profound emotional roller coaster of a traditional Mothili wedding told entirely from the bride's perspective. It preserves everything in amber. It captures the specific cultural etiquette, the inside jokes shared among the women, playful teasing of the groom's guests and ultimately the deep gut-wrenching sorrow of the bidai, the moment the bride leaves her childhood home forever. And the genius of Sharda Senha, as described in the text, is that her voice literally carries the soil of Mithla. She doesn't need heavy synthesizers or detone to convey emotion. Her rigorous classical training is perfectly wedded to the raw, unpolished, guttural emotion of the folk tradition. When she sings listeners aren't just hearing a song, they're being transported. They're reliving their own cultural memories, smelling the incense, feeling the humidity of the monsoon. It's the perfect elusive synthesis of high artistic skill and deep grounded folk reality. It sounds incredibly beautiful, but the journal doesn't let us sit in that beauty for long. It abruptly shifts gears, and the mood of the source material gets incredibly dark, highlighting the institutional rot that threatens these exact traditions. Yeah, this part is rough. We're introduced to a deeply moving and frankly enraging tribute to Professor Chandeshwar Jaa, written by Dr. Kailash Kumar Mishra. Professor Jaa was an absolute giant in the field of folk music preservation. He wasn't an armchair academic, you know? No, not at all. The text details how he didn't just sit in an air conditioned library analyzing texts. He physically traveled from village to village. He walked the dusty rural roads of Mithla for years, sitting in courtyards, and personally collected over 1500 authentic undocumented folk songs. 1500, that's a life's work. He was a singer, a meticulous researcher, and a walking breathing archive of a disappearing world. But his stories framed as a massive tragedy because despite his undeniable genius and his tireless work, he was tormented, obstructed, and ultimately hindered by his own employer. He worked at Lulliden Narayan Mifila University, an institution explicitly named after the region and tasked with preserving its knowledge. Yet the text explicitly states that Professor Ja was a victim of the most petty, jealous, toxic, academic politics imaginable. It's infuriating to read. His colleagues in the university administration driven by fragile egos, professional jealousy, and sheer spite actively blocked his research grants. They ruined his projects, denied him resources, and basically made his daily life miserable. Dr. Mishra's tribute is filled with this palpable sorrow because Professor Ha was uniquely, perhaps supernaturally gifted. He had this extraordinary psychological empathy that allowed him to sing from the emotional perspective of a woman. Wait, really? Explain that a bit more. Yeah, the text specifically mentions the type of morning song called the Prati. These are songs traditionally sung by women at the break of dawn, filled with specific female anxieties, devotions and perspectives. Dr. Mishra notes that when Professor Ha sang a Prati, he didn't sound like a man doing an imitation of a woman. It wasn't a caricature. No, not at all. Through sheer empathy and deep cultural understanding, he completely blurred the lines between the male performer and the internal female psychological experience. He channeled the specific emotional resonance of the women of Mithila in a way that effortlessly bypassed all the rigid gender norms of the society. He possessed this transcendent empathy that allowed him to preserve the female voice in a deeply patriarchal society. And how did his institution, the university, reward him for this monumental cultural service? By suffocating him. By suffocating him. I have to ask you, as the listener, to think about how often we see this exact dynamic play out in our own lives. Institutions that are literally designed, funded, and mandated to protect, study, and elevate culture end up suffocating their absolute brightest stars because of middle management jealousy and fragile egos. It happens so often. It's exactly like a museum guard, entrusted with protecting the world's greatest paintings, locking the front doors and throwing away the key just so no one else can look at the art, purely because the guard wants to feel like the most important person in the building. That's a devastating indictment of institutional failure, but it's completely accurate. It shows what happens when the scripture of academia, the bureaucracy, the official titles, the grant committees, the departmental hierarchies becomes more important than the folk reality of the actual living art being preserved. The culture just bleeds out on the floor. And Dr. Mishra makes it painfully clear that Professor Jaude died without ever receiving the accolades, the national recognition, or the institutional support he so richly deserved entirely because of this systemic localized jealousy. And this theme, this deeply destructive power of fragile male egos, systemic injustice, and institutional hypocrisy, the source material reveals that this is not just an isolated problem in the ivory towers of academia. No, it's everywhere. It's a dark, pervasive rot in the bedrock of the society itself, which leads us to what is, without a doubt, the most harrowing, difficult, and sociologically dense essay in this entire journal. It really is a profound shift in tone. I think a clear content warning is appropriate here as we are going to discuss systemic domestic abuse and societal cruelty. Definitely. The text features a deeply unsettling sociological piece analyzing a very specific tragic societal role in mythola, the peritacta. This translates to the abandoned wife. Now we need to be clear, this is not about divorce in the modern legal mediated sense. Right, there's no mediation here. This is about a deeply patriarchal rigid society that allows men to simply discard their wives, forcing these abandoned women to live a life that the author explicitly describes as being worse than widowhood. It is a brutal, unflinching read. The author argues that when a woman is widowed by the death of her husband, society at least provides a recognized script for her grief. There are official rituals, there's a recognized status, and while it's a highly restricted, often oppressive life, there is a baseline of communal sympathy. But the peridacta, the woman whose husband simply packs up and discards her while he's still alive, legally married but entirely absent, she carries an immense, crushing social stigma. The community views her with deep suspicion. She's invariably blamed for her own abandonment like what did she do to make him leave. And she's treated as an absolute pariah. And the brilliance of this essay is that the author traces this modern cruelty all the way back to the culture's foundational myths. This is where it gets really dark. This is where the sociological critique becomes incredibly razor sharp. The essay meticulously unpacks the historical and mythological roots of this behavior. It brings up a Bahalia who in the epics was tricked and then turned to stone as a punishment, abandoned to the elements. It brings up Sita, the ultimate symbol of female devotion, who was famously abandoned in the forest by Rama despite proving her absolute purity through a trial by fire. And it brings up a historical figure named Farati. Farati was the wife of a revered ancient philosopher named Vachaspati. The text details how Vachaspati essentially used his wife's labor, care, and silent devotion for years just so he could have the peace and sustenance required to write his famous treatises. And then what does he do? The moment he finished his great work, he abandoned her. The author's core argument is that these aren't just old stories, harmless myths, or ancient history. They are structural blueprints. They're teaching tools. Yes. The Modern Patriarchal Society uses these revered texts and stories to implicitly justify and normalize the modern exploitation and abandonment of women. The logic is, well, if the gods and the great philosophers did it, why can't a modern man? The essay is arguing that the scripture is actively knowingly weaponized against the folk. And to prove that this isn't just an abstract historical theory, the author provides these incredibly chilling, vivid, real-life anecdotes. Yeah, these anecdotes are tough to read. These stories prove that this cruelty is happening right now, today, among the so-called educated progressive elite. The first anecdote the author provides involves a famous, wealthy, highly regarded modern literary man. The community views him as an intellectual leader. This man deliberately goes out of his way to marry a traditional, uneducated girl from a rural village. Then when she's trapped in his home, he brutally abuses her, both physically and mentally, claiming she isn't modern or sophisticated enough to fit his elevated lifestyle. He forces her out of his home, entirely severing support, turning her into a peritacta. And what makes this anecdote so utterly insidious, so hypocritical, is that this exact same man then goes on to write award-winning, progressive literature, championing women's rights and feminism. You've got to be kidding me. And his intellectual peers, the people who grant him these awards, cheer him on, fully knowing exactly what he did to his own wife. Wait, is this just the ultimate PR spin? Because looking at it from the outside, It feels like this man is using his status, his literary awards, his progressive vocabulary, his wealth as an impenetrable shield. Exactly. He gets to write feminist poetry on stage, get applauded by high society as a visionary, and then go home and act like an absolute tyrant behind closed doors. And the society allows it because he says the right words in public. It's disgusting. I want to be very clear to the listener here. We are looking at these sociological critiques exactly as the author laid them out. We are impartially reporting the text to understand how this specific society operates. But the author is shining a glaring, uncompromising spotlight on these individuals and the hypocrisy of the society that enables them. And the text provides a second anecdote that is just as cold, proving it isn't just the literary elite, it spans the corporate world as well. The author describes the corporate manager, a man of means and modern education, who marries an innocent, simple woman. After merely seven months of marriage, he abandons her entirely. The reason. Simply so we can turn around and marry her slightly younger, supposedly more attractive sister. That is just so cruel. And the most damning, horrific part of this story isn't just the man's actions. It's the societal reaction. The text emphasizes that the man's family, his parents, and the broader society around him fully support his cruelty. They facilitate the second marriage. They help him do it. Yeah. is left with absolutely nothing, her reputation in life effectively ruined by societal dictates, while the man suffers zero social or professional consequences. The hypocrisy is absolutely staggering. The very men who write the rules, who define the scripture of modern success, who hold the power in academia, literature, and corporate life, are the ones perpetrating the most archaic, devastating forms of abuse, and they use the ancient myths as their permission slip. Which brings us to a vital existential crossroads for the culture. I mean, if the official upper-crest society, with all its wealth, its literary awards, its universities, and its foundational scriptures, is this hypocritical and this inherently dangerous for women, how do women actually survive? That's the real question. If the rulebook is designed to crush them, where do they find actual practical lived wisdom to navigate a world that is so heavily stacked against them? That is the perfect pivot because the journal doesn't just outline the oppression. It actually answers that exact question. It does. And the answer is found in the final major theme we're exploring today, subversive folk wisdom. The text provides this deeply fascinating, almost secretive cultural analysis of the Matthew Shravani Festival. What's fascinating here is that the Matthew Shravani Festival is a highly specific cultural event that takes place over 15 days during during the heavy monsoon season. It involves daily rituals, and it's primarily observed by newlywed brides. Okay, so just the new brides. Right, the core activity of this festival involves older married women gathering the young brides together to tell them a series of traditional oral stories. But the author of this essay points out something extraordinary about the content of these specific stories. They focus heavily on the goddess Gaudi, but this is not the perfect, submissive, sanitized eternally devoted gowri that you find in the official patriarchal scripture. Not at all. The stories told during Matusharani depict the goddess gowri as completely flawed, incredibly fiery, and fiercely human. Yeah, very human. The essay outlines how, in these specific folk tales, gowri is shown actively learning witchcraft and dark magic out of sheer jealousy. She is depicted trespassing and stealing egg plants from a farmer's field because she is hungry and wants them. I love that detail. Right. And she's shown playfully, boldly flirting with a lowly boatman who, in the twist of the story, actually turns out to be her husband, Lord Shiva, in disguise, testing her fidelity. The brilliance of this oral tradition requires a deep dive into human psychology. I mean, why would these older, respected women intentionally spend 15 days telling newlywed bride's stories about her revered, divine goddess behaving badly? Why tell them stories of jealousy, theft, and flirting? The essay argues that this is a highly calculated underground syllabus of subversive feminist wisdom. The older women know exactly what the scriptural rules of the outside society demand. They know society demands that a wife be absolutely perfect, utterly submissive, silently self-sacrificing, and devoid of personal desire. And they know how dangerous that is. And they know, as we saw with the Perichakta essay, that this is an impossible fatal standard that men will inevitably weaponize against women to discard them. So by portraying the goddess Gaudi, the ultimate divine feminine, as flawed as someone who makes mistakes, gets jealous, breaks the rules, gets angry and has independent desires, these older women are essentially providing a masterclass in practical, real-world marital survival. They're looking at these terrified young brides and saying, look, even the divine mother of the universe isn't perfect. She gets jealous. She makes mistakes. Do not let this society or your new husband crush you with impossible standards of perfection. Precisely. It is about emotional survival. Take the story of Gauri flirting with the boatman. When it's revealed that the boatman is Shiva testing her, it leads to a complex confrontation and a dialogue between husband and wife. The lesson hidden in that story isn't about blind obedience. It's about navigating boundaries, dealing with marital temptation, and understanding that trust in a marriage is a shared, constantly negotiated responsibility. is not a scriptural mandate of blind one-sided female obedience. This folk wisdom deeply acknowledges human psychology. It's realistic, it's forgiving, and it's deeply aware of the messy nature of human relationships, which stands in stark, subversive contrast to the rigid, punitive rules of the official patriarchal scripture. It's literally a secret underground syllabus for surviving a patriarchal marriage passed down orally from generation to generation of women, completely hidden under the unassailable guise of a pious religious festival. The men think the women are just praying, but the women are actually teaching each other how to survive the men. It's incredibly empowering. It is incredibly empowering. But there's a massive caveat here that we have to address. The author raises a critical heart-breaking question at the very end of this piece. If this Mudhoo Shravani festival is so profoundly empowering and its lessons are so deeply realistic and vital for a woman's psychological survival, why hasn't it spread? Yeah, that's the tragedy. The text notes that this festival has remained strictly isolated to the Brahmin cast, the upper cast in Mithila. Why wouldn't these women share this incredible tool for female empowerment with all communities across all castes? That is the tragic paradox that the author leaves us to wrestle with. It perfectly illustrates how intersecting systems of oppression function in reality. The Brahmin women have brilliantly carved out a safe space to subvert the patriarchy through these folktales. But the deeply ingrained rigid rules of the caste system, the ultimate scripture of social hierarchy, prevent them from sharing that vital survival knowledge with women of other lower castes. Class and caste barriers act as impenetrable walls containing the wisdom and preventing a broader unified cultural evolution. So they subvert one system but uphold another. They subvert the patriarchy but they uphold the caste system. It proves that even in moments of brilliant subversion the scripture still finds a way to divide the folk. Wow. Okay, let's take a deep breath and zoom out because we have covered an incredible amount of ground in this deep dive into issue 20 of the Vadea e-journal. We really have. We started by looking at the messy digital struggles of Mathillian musicians in Nepal fighting off monopoly syndicates and the desperate allure of cheap synthesizers just to survive. We looked at the tragic reality of academic jealousy, suffocating brilliant empathetic minds like Professor Sondeshwar Haar. We faced the harrowing hypocritical reality of the abandoned wives, the Parisiachta, and the modern men who use ancient myth to justify their cruelty. And finally, we uncovered the secret, subversive feminist wisdom hidden in the monsoon festival stories of Mother Trevonni and the caste barriers that keep that wisdom locked away. When you synthesize all of these incredibly diverse texts, it connects directly to everyone listening right now, regardless of your specific cultural background or where you live. Hell, because we all navigate this exact same tension every single day of our lives. We all live caught between the scripture of our lives, the official rules, the societal expectations, the corporate ladders, the religious dogmas, the Instagram perfect standards we're told to follow, and the folk reality of how we actually survive, How we adapt, how we subvert those impossible rules, and how we manage to find joy and identity in the messy reality of being human. That is beautifully said. And as we wrap up this deep dive, I want to leave you, the listener, with one final, provocative thought to mull over. It's inspired by a very quiet set of diary entries found in the text, written by a man named Ravi Bhushan Pathak. Oh, Pathak's diary. Yes. In his diary, Pathak writes about a psychological trap that I think almost all of us fall into. He notes how we constantly, unconsciously project our own regional, cultural, and personal insecurities onto our local artists. He writes that we treat our musicians, our writers, our local heroes exactly like sports teams. Yeah, we attach our ego to them. If a local Mothilli singer wins on a national stage, we feel like our region wins. Like we win. If they lose or if they're ignored, we take it as a personal insult. We feel like we lose. And it makes you wonder, when you are listening to a local artist, or when you're aggressively championing a hometown hero in any field, are you really truly appreciating their art for the vulnerable thing that it is? Or are you just desperately looking for a validation of your own identity? Are we actually supporting the artist, or are we just using them as a proxy to prove our own worth to the rest of the world? It's a profound question about the nature of fandom and cultural pride. Exactly. It's something to seriously think about the next time you find yourself blindly rooting for the hometown kid. Remember that broken x-ray machine we talked about at the very beginning of this conversation? Society isn't binary. Culture is not a clean break. The next time you look at your own culture, your own traditions, or your own hometown, don't just look for the clean, white, easily diagnosable lines. Look for the mud. Look for the mud. Look for the messy fusions, the hypocrisies, the cheap synthesizers trying to survive, and the secret subversive wisdom hiding in plain sight. Thanks for joining us on this deep dive.

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