Hi Reader,
Do you know why the most valuable startup in India just collapsed, with its founder sentenced to prison this week?
There are only two ways a business like that goes down. It was chasing something it could never catch.
Or it was running hard with no idea where it was going. Bhagna, or Doudna.
By the end of this note you will know both words, you will know the difference, and you will know which one is quietly running your own business right now. Then you tell me which one you think took Byju’s down.
In Hindi there are two words that both translate to the English word run. Bhagna, and Doudna. They sound similar. The emotion behind them is the opposite.
Bhagna is running after something already in motion, or running away from something behind you.
Picture a dog chasing a moving car. The dog is flat out, legs burning, giving everything. But the dog does not choose the speed. The dog does not choose the direction. The car chooses. The dog is only reacting. And the dog will never catch the car. That is Bhagna. You are running as hard as you can, but you are not in control of a single thing that matters. The dominant feeling is fear. Your mood rises and falls with how close the car feels, and the car is never close enough.
Doudna is the morning run. You decide to go. You choose the route. You choose the pace. You choose when to start and when to stop. The same legs, the same sweat, but everything is in your hands. The feeling is not fear. It is control. You know exactly what you are doing and why. There is no panic, because nothing is chasing you and you are not chasing anything you cannot reach. You are just running your own laps.
Same word in English. Two opposite states. And here is why it matters for the company that just collapsed.
Look at the two ways it could have happened, because both are traps.
The first trap is pure Bhagna. The founder chasing the result at any cost. A bigger valuation. A bigger number. Faster growth, more markets, more noise, every quarter. Chasing a moving target that kept accelerating, running flat out at a car he was never going to catch. In that version, the effort was enormous and the control was zero. The market set the speed. The investors set the direction. He just ran, because stopping felt like dying. That is the dog and the car. No amount of effort saves you, because effort was never the problem. Control was.
But there is a second trap, and almost nobody talks about it, because it looks like discipline. It is Doudna with no destination. Imagine a founder who is calm, controlled, working hard and steady every single day, doing everything right at the level of effort. But who never stopped to choose where all that running was actually going. No clear destination. Just a belief that if you work hard enough, something good will happen on its own. It does not. Without a destination, all that disciplined running still takes you somewhere. You just do not get to choose where. You end up in a place you never picked, and by the time you look up, you are already there.
I do not know which of these the founder was. From the outside, nobody does. That is the honest answer, and anyone who tells you they know exactly why a company that size fell is guessing.
But that is not the point of this note. The point is the question, and the question is not about him. It is about you.
Right now, in your business, are you in Bhagna or Doudna?
Are you chasing a number you cannot control, your mood swinging every time it moves, running flat out at a car that keeps speeding up? That is Bhagna, and no amount of effort will fix it, because the problem is not your effort. It is that you handed control of your day to something outside your reach.
Or are you running hard with no real destination, mistaking motion for progress, trusting that good things will simply arrive if you stay busy enough? That is Doudna without a map, and it feels productive right up until you look up and find yourself somewhere you never chose.
The way out of both is the same. Choose the destination, so you are not just reacting to a moving car.
Then point your daily effort at something you actually control, so you are not chasing a number that owns your mood. A destination you choose, fed by an effort you control. That is Doudna with a map.
That is the only running that takes you where you meant to go.
Most people spend their whole lives in Bhagna, chasing money, chasing status, tired and anxious, trying to catch the wind. You do not have to. You can choose where you are going, and then run your own laps toward it.
So before the week starts, ask yourself the one question that founder’s story leaves behind.
Am I running, or am I being chased?
Don’t set goals. TAME the effort.
BJay
See you next week!
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