These musings of Tagore (1971) force me to ponder the irony of my own research enterprise. I wonder how many of my subjects chuckled when I asked them, “What sense do you make of the Mahabharata?” when they might in fact be “singing” these songs through their lives. Perhaps they did “sit there smiling,” and they have every right to do that. But then, I have the right to ask them about the song; perhaps “telling” me about the song may reveal the depths of the song and mutually benefit both of us. It could enhance my understanding of their song and the song itself. It also gives an “outsider's perspective” – an externalization of private meanings – as Vygotsky (1987) points out: “thinking and speech are key to understanding the nature of human consciousness” (p. 285). Private meanings and spontaneous forms of knowledge, Vygotsky argues, are enriched by public expressions and formalizations. The movement is back and forth. Bakhtin writes with some elegance on the significance of outsider's perspective: