After releasing three indie tracks back to back with Riya Duggal and Lothika Jha, singer-songwriter Yohan Marshall is out with his second release this year — Just For Once featuring Mali, a popular and versatile singer-songwriter on the music scene.

On Just For Once, Marshall collaborates with Mali to deliver an emotional cinematic-pop masterpiece that perfectly blends acoustic singer-songwriter elements with orchestral grandiose. The song is a reminder that anything is possible if you never give up. Acting as a friend reaffirming your faith during your toughest moments, the song speaks about overcoming adversity, breaking limiting beliefs and reaching for your potential no matter what. The song features a short-form content, a high-production music video, and an acoustic version.

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Chai is a composition that transcends musical genres, weaving together bossa nova, soft rock and indie elements. It is a poignant reflection on resilience and finding tranquillity amidst life’s challenges. Each verse delves into the intricacies of an existential crisis, articulating a range of life’s adversities. The chorus, however, stands as Jewel Lasrado’s steadfast declaration: “When the world’s on fire, I’ll be sipping chai.” This refrain encapsulates the core message of the song — the ability to seek solace and embrace a carefree spirit even in the face of adversity. Jewel penned the song during an evening marked by challenges, yet found solace in the simple act of sipping chai.

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Has a personal setback or sorrow bumped into you so far in your life? A loved one’s death or a heartbreak or a failure or squabbling in the family?

It is impossible to rank sorrows in the order of their painful impact. The pain felt due to the loss of a parent cannot be compared with an experience of ruthless bullying in school/college, but for the bearer the scar might well be equally scary. To have an unemployed or abusive father could be as painful for a growing teenager as the first betrayal in love could be for another.

We have all grown up listening to various quotes, fables, songs, and talks by parents and elders guiding us in various ways that ups and downs are, and shall be inevitable in life. But what about the skills needed to scale these ups and downs? In how many homes, or even in schools, are these skills imparted so that we can handle these adversities better?

Most schools, too, go about stuffing down formulae, calculations, theorems, laws, etc., down our systems, while smirking at the very impracticality of the proposition of imparting life-skills in students so that they can handle adversities better.

Yet, challenges, crises situations and adversities cannot be wished away. No matter how much our parents and teachers, and elders love us, and bless us, we will have to go through our share of the sun and the rain. No one is spared. Yes, life is a mixed bag! What shall pop out of the surprise bag and when and how, no one knows!

Adversity Quotient?

How ready are we for all good and not-so-good experiences life may pop out for us? We must spend some time and energy on improving our adversity quotient, before sorrow catches us unawares. There was a time when the whole world was obsessed with pushing up the IQ (Intelligence Quotient) of children. All efforts were directed at improving IQ because our intelligence quotient was then considered synonymous with ‘success.’

Today, the parameters of ‘success’ have shifted. It is widely-known now, that ‘success’ cannot be entirely defined in terms of a student’s aptitude to ram calculations, logic, and grammar into his or her head. Countless instances wherein merit-list toppers and rank holders have committed suicide or harmed themselves or crumbled under the most trivial of circumstances, forced the world to sit upright and take notice of the futility of scoring high on just the IQ scale.

The idea has somewhat dawned on all that to live life happily and successfully, we need a good score on the Emotional Quotient (EQ) scale and the Adversity Quotient scale. While there are psychometric and biometric tests available which claim to tell us our AQ score, we do not have to necessarily go through them to know where we stand. There is a simple technique:

Just ask yourself!

Yes, do regularly sit with yourself and ponder over the happy and sad occurrences in your life and look objectively at your reactions to the latter. Did you behave calmly and give a matured response? Did you hysterically cry at minor issues and create a ruckus?

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A young man asked a holy man to pray for him to have more perseverance. The holy man got on his knees and began,

“Lord, send this young man problems in the afternoon, send this young man adversity in the evening, send this young man…”

“Stop!” shouted the young fellow, “I didn’t ask you to pray for problems and adversity, I asked you to pray for more perseverance.”

“Ah,” responded the holy man, “It’s through adversity that you learn perseverance!”

I saw this happening to an Indian athlete at the Olympics some years ago with J. J. Shobha, the runner from Hyderabad. Shobha ran with an injury.

Spectators cheered as they saw her surging forward, grimacing with pain from her torn ligament, they cheered as she gritted her teeth and slowly, steadily inched past her competitors.

“I was shocked,” said one of the others on the track, “to see her striding past me.” But Shobha put her heart into that race and finished third!

Nobody is ever going to forget the gutsy, gritty girl. She taught the world that injury, problems and adversity could spur one on to success.

Yet, we pray for wonder drugs to help us win battles. We pray for easy solutions where we won’t have to put too much effort or muscle. “Take away the mountain in front of us God!” we shout.

“Climb over it my child,” He whispers.

“I can’t.”

“You can!”

“My feet hurt, my legs ache!”

“Climb,” says the Lord with a smile, “climb!”

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