e Magus

A Face to a Name -80s Trend on Social Media

2026-09-12T09:16:28.644+05:30

Have you uploaded your photograph, reimagined in the grainy, sepia toned glow of the 1980s, onto social media? Congrats! You are now part of millions who queued up and are still queuing up to be aged backwards by an algorithm, all in the name of a little harmless fun. And it was fun. It always is, in the moment.

But have you ever given it a thought on what’s happening underneath the filter, something our very human, very forgetful brains are not quite built to notice. We are, all of us, terrible at holding on to things. We forget names within seconds of being introduced, we recognise a face across a crowded room and cannot place it. This gap, between knowing of someone and truly knowing them, is one of the oldest and most forgivable of human failings. It is also, it turns out, the one thing that machines have been patiently waiting for us to close.

For years now, the platforms we live with have been collecting the parts of us that don't need a face — what we like, what we fear, what we hope, whom we love, what keeps us up at 2 a.m. scrolling instead of sleeping. They have known our anxieties before our doctors have. They have known our loyalties before we have. What they lacked was almost quaint: a face to go with the file. And now, dressed up as nostalgia, handed over with a smile, we have given them exactly that.

This is the peculiar trick of technology today. It never asks for anything directly. It waits for us to want something trivial enough — a filter, a trend, a moment of collective delight — and lets us hand over the valuable thing as a side effect. Nobody forced the photograph out of us. We offered it, the way we offer most of ourselves now, cheerfully and without much thought, because the alternative - FOMO….sitting out a trend, feels like a social death.

Whether this is sinister or simply the shape of modern life depends, as it always does, on who is asking and why. A face can help a machine recognise us faster at an airport, or serve us an advertisement so precisely aimed it feels like being understood. The same completeness that makes us feel seen is what makes us easier to predict, and therefore easier to lead. This is not new — culture has always been in the business of shaping desire — but the scale and the intimacy of it are new, and we have not yet worked out what we feel about being known this well by something that does not, in any sense, know us back.

We created machines specifically to compensate for human limitation.. The tool we built to serve our memory has turned into something that holds a more complete memory of us than we could ever have of ourselves

In Praise of Swear Words

2026-09-02T21:09:39.795+05:30

A friend asked me the other day, “Since you are working remotely, what is the one thing you miss most about working from an office?” In jest, I replied, “Using—and hearing—the bad words.”

Having spent many years in the advertising industry, I lived in an environment where our daily conversations had very few filters. Brainstorming rooms, office corridors, coffee and smoke breaks, late-night deadlines—these were spaces where the so-called forbidden four-letter words, along with their far more colourful Hindi counterparts with elaborate familial references, flowed with ease.

They were not always expressions of anger. More often than not, they signalled excitement, disbelief, frustration, admiration or simply emphasis. A creative idea could be described as “bloody brilliant” in one breath and torn apart with equal linguistic intensity in the next…with a combination of same word. Nobody paused to take offence. The words, stripped of much of their literal meaning, functioned almost like emotional punctuation marks.

And yet, step outside the office—into a client meeting, a formal presentation or even a family gathering—and the same vocabulary would feel entirely out of place. The shift was almost automatic. Without conscious effort, one switched languages, tones and boundaries.

It is this easy, almost invisible switching that reveals something interesting about what we call “bad words”. Their meaning is not fixed. It is negotiated constantly through context and relationship.

The same word that can sound affectionate among friends can be deeply offensive in another setting. Among colleagues who have spent years working together, it can signal trust and familiarity. Between strangers, hostility. The word itself does not change. What changes is the permission around it.

We begin learning this surprisingly early. As children, we encounter swear words not through meaning but through prohibition. “Don't say that.” “Where did you hear that?” Often, it is the adult reaction rather than the word itself that gives it power. We quickly discover that certain sounds can disrupt order. The attraction lies less in understanding and more in transgression. Language, for a brief moment, becomes a way of testing boundaries.

Adolescence takes this a step further. Among friends, forbidden words often become markers of closeness. Mock insults and exaggerated abuses are not meant to wound but to signal comfort. They say, without saying it directly, that the relationship can withstand a certain amount of irreverence.

By adulthood, most of us become reasonably adept at navigating these codes. The language we use in a formal meeting is measured and deliberate. With friends, it becomes looser and more expressive. At home, yet another version emerges.

We do not necessarily abandon bad words as we grow older. We simply learn where they belong—and where they do not. This placement reflects our reading of hierarchy, context and consequence. A senior professional using a strong word in a meeting might be seen as forceful or authentic. A junior using the same word could be judged as lacking restraint. The word remains unchanged, but its impact shifts with who says it and where. In that sense, swear words often reveal as much about power as they do about language.

Society, of course, has always tried to regulate such boundaries. The censor board decides what can be said in films. Governments draw lines for media. Social media platforms flag, suppress or quietly discourage language considered unacceptable. These are attempts to formalise what remains, at its core, an informal system: the unwritten rules of who can say what, to whom and in which context.

But the real regulation of language happens at a far more intimate level—between individuals. We constantly read cues, test limits and adjust our speech. A word that feels perfectly natural in one conversation can feel completely inappropriate in another, even when the subject remains the same.

Perhaps this is because swear words tend to emerge when emotion exceeds the neat boundaries of polite expression. Anger, surprise, frustration and occasionally joy, when they peak, spill into language that is less filtered and more instinctive. In those moments, the word is less about meaning than release.

In multilingual cultures like ours, the matter becomes even more interesting. Many of us move between English and our mother tongues through the day. English often carries the burden of professionalism and restraint, while our native languages hold a more immediate emotional vocabulary. A rude word in one's mother tongue can feel sharper, and considerably more dangerous, precisely because it sits closer to instinct.

Technology has complicated things further. Words that were once safely confined to particular contexts now travel freely across platforms. Something casually said among friends can suddenly acquire a much larger audience, stripped of tone, relationship and context. The boundaries that once held language in place have become more porous.

And yet, despite all this complexity, the underlying logic remains surprisingly simple. We are not using these words merely to break rules. Often, we are using them to signal which rules do not apply between us.

That may explain why the same word can both wound deeply and bind strongly. What we call “bad words” are not necessarily bad words. They are simply words carrying more social meaning than most. In using them, we reveal not just what we feel, but where we stand with each other.

Manifesting Manifestation

2026-06-23T11:23:39.368+05:30

A few weeks ago, manifestation began manifesting itself in my life.

It first appeared during the parents orientation at my son's school. Apart from the usual academics, values and future readiness, the principal also spoke earnestly about manifestation. A few days later, an actor in a magazine interview attributed much of her success to it. Then came the inevitable WhatsApp forward, delivered with the confidence usually reserved for medical advice and stock market predictions.

Three encounters in two weeks felt statistically significant. Either manifestation was everywhere, or it had decided to manifest itself specifically before me. Manifestation, is the belief that by focusing your thoughts, intentions and emotions on a desired outcome, you can attract it into your reality. Think positively, visualise success, align your energy with your goals, and the universe, apparently, begins making arrangements on your behalf.

But this idea is surprisingly familiar. The urge behind manifestation is hardly new. Human beings have always wanted things. We have wanted health, prosperity, success, love, recognition and occasionally a neighbour's plot of land. The desire to influence an uncertain future is probably as old as civilisation itself.

Growing up, most of us encountered a different version of the same impulse. Before examinations, job interviews, business ventures or family crises, people visited temples, churches, mosques and gurudwaras. They prayed. They made vows. They asked for help. They expressed hope for a future they desired but could not entirely control.

The ancient Egyptians consulted oracles. The Greeks sought guidance from Delphi. Across cultures, rituals emerged to improve the odds of favourable outcomes. Indian traditions too are filled with practices that connect thought, intention and reality. The Sanskrit phrase "Yad Bhavam Tad Bhavati" (as you think, so you become). Long before motivational speakers discovered vision boards, human beings were trying to persuade the future to cooperate.

What seems different today is not the desire itself but the language around it. A generation ago, people commonly said things like, "God willing", "Keep me in your prayers", or "Let's hope for the best." Today, one increasingly hears, "I'm putting it out into the universe", "I'm manifesting it", or "The energy will come back."

The ritual survives. The vocabulary changes. Perhaps that is because manifestation is perfectly suited to the spirit of our times.

Modern life asks us to believe two seemingly contradictory things. First, that we are entirely responsible for our own lives. Success and failure are presented as personal outcomes. We are encouraged to optimise ourselves, improve ourselves, upgrade ourselves and continuously work on ourselves. At the same time, many of the forces shaping our lives feel increasingly beyond our control. Pandemics (google trends shows that searches for ‘manifestation’ grew multifold during the Covid-19 period), economic uncertainty, technological disruption, layoffs, climate anxiety and algorithmic decisions have a way of reminding us that the future remains stubbornly unpredictable. Manifestation occupies this interesting space between agency and helplessness. It allows us to feel we are doing something even when there is little we can actually do. It restores a sense of participation in outcome that remains uncertain.

This may explain why manifestation has flourished alongside the broader self-improvement industry. In a world where everything from productivity to happiness has become a personal project, manifestation offers a particularly attractive proposition: that the mind itself can become a tool for shaping reality.

There is also a second thought. Modern society has been quietly separating rituals from the institutions that originally housed them. We practise yoga without necessarily embracing its philosophy. We observe festivals for culture as much as religion. We seek mindfulness outside monasteries. We fast for health rather than faith. Manifestation may simply be another example of this phenomenon. It retains the structure of prayer while removing the formal presence of God. The request remains. The hope remains. The visualisation remains. Even the faith remains. Only the recipient has changed.

Of course, there is one important difference. Traditional prayer contained an element of surrender. One asked, but also accepted that the answer might be no. Manifestation places greater emphasis on agency. It suggests that the act of believing may itself influence the outcome.

Whether one accepts that proposition is perhaps less important than recognising the need it serves.

Because beneath all the new terminology, manifestation appears to address a very old human concern. How do we live with uncertainty? How do we remain hopeful when outcomes are beyond our control? How do we continue acting when the future refuses to offer guarantees?

For centuries, religions helped answer these questions. Today, self-help literature, podcasts, influencers and social media communities increasingly occupy some of that space.

The packaging has changed. The need has not. Perhaps manifestation is not really a new belief at all. It is an old human instinct dressed in contemporary language. We still whisper our hopes into the future. We still search for signs that things will work out. We still want reassurance that our desires matter.

The only difference is that previous generations addressed their hopes to the heavens, the newer generation seem more inclined to address them to the universe.

The Things We Make for a Day

2026-04-09T16:01:00.001+05:30

Like every year, our festival of Vishu arrives on April 14th. When we were kids, Vishu meant two or three things: early morning firecrackers, Vishu kaineettam, and the sumptuous sadya that followed.

But the central activity revolves around the Vishu kani.

Late on the previous night, long after most of the family members have gone to sleep, the women of the family would still be awake assembling the Vishu kani. The brass uruli would be brought out and polished until it caught the lamplight. A kolam would be drawn, and rice, fruits, vegetables from the harvest, flowers, a mirror, a lamp, jewellery, Puranas, currencies, new cloth, and the image of Krishna would be placed with care—as if abundance itself were being composed into a still life. Before sunrise, everyone in the household would see this arrangement as their first sight of the day, a moment of bounty and beauty. By evening, however, everything would disappear.

If one thinks about it, we Indians seem remarkably comfortable pouring care into things that are meant to vanish quickly.

Every morning across India, in lakhs of homes, someone—usually the lady of the house—bends down at the doorstep and begins an act of beauty that is transient in nature. White powder trickles through her fingers, connecting dots. Soon a geometric or floral pattern emerges, and with a touch of colour a rangoli appears—only to dissolve into smudges and footprints before the day ends. And yet, the next morning, it will be made again.

Once you begin to notice it, this instinct appears everywhere. Marigold garlands brighten our doors knowing they will wilt by night. Diyas burn briefly before surrendering to smoke. Firecrackers rise in bursts of sound and vanish within seconds. Jasmine flowers adorning the hair fade within hours. Mehendi darkens into intricate elegance precisely when its fading has already begun. Glass bangles bought at village fairs are worn with delight even though many will not last the fortnight.

Even our grandest celebrations are comfortable with impermanence. A wedding mandap rises like a palace only to vanish within days. Idols of Ganesha and Durga arrive as divine guests and leave through immersion. The idol is not destroyed; it is returned.

In a world increasingly obsessed with preservation, this instinct can seem puzzling. Modern life values permanence. We archive photographs, store documents, back up memories in clouds, and measure success by what lasts. The highest compliment we pay an object is that it will endure. Yet Indian life often appears guided by a different intuition: not permanence, but renewal. A rangoli does not need to survive because its meaning lies not in endurance but in return. Its disappearance is simply the prelude to its next appearance.

Perhaps this instinct is not merely aesthetic but philosophical. A culture shaped by the idea of cycles—of seasons returning, of karma unfolding across births, and of existence moving through rhythms of creation and dissolution—may naturally find comfort in beauty that does not insist on permanence. The rangoli, erased each evening and reborn each morning, quietly mirrors a worldview in which endings are rarely final.

Curiously, however, this comfort with impermanence exists alongside an apparently opposite instinct. The same homes that allow a rangoli to vanish without regret are filled with objects expected to last decades. Dining tables remain companions through generations. Steel utensils refuse to retire. Old sarees are reincarnated as quilts or cleaning cloths. Plastic containers migrate across purposes with remarkable resilience. Indian households, in fact, are masters at making things last.

At first glance, the two instincts seem contradictory. Why create beauty that disappears while expecting furniture to survive forty years? The answer may lie in how we treat objects and rituals differently. Objects belong to utility; rituals belong to meaning. Utility demands durability; meaning thrives on renewal. A dining table must endure because it serves daily life, while a rangoli must disappear because its beauty lies in the act of making it again.

Modern consumer culture, interestingly, often reverses this logic. Today we increasingly live with temporary objects—fast fashion, disposable furniture, gadgets designed for obsolescence—while simultaneously trying to preserve every memory forever through digital archives. Traditional Indian life did the opposite. Objects were built to endure; beauty was made to return.

Perhaps that is why our everyday culture feels less like accumulation and more like rehearsal. Festivals return each year with familiar lights, smells, sweets, and songs—not because we lack novelty, but because repetition itself offers reassurance.

In that sense, the rangoli at the doorstep may be one of the most modest expressions of a larger cultural intuition: not everything meaningful needs to last. Some things derive their value precisely from the fact that they must be made again. By tomorrow morning, the doorstep will be empty once more, and somewhere, before the day gathers speed, someone will bend down again and begin another small act of faith in return. Perhaps, for us, the act matters more than the artifact.

Wish you, a Happy Vishu.

Life Without Intermission

2026-03-20T11:17:00.004+05:30

This post somehow is an extension of my earlier blog, For Ol’ Times’ Sake, written after meeting former colleagues at a reunion. I found myself thinking about the curious role memory plays in our lives, and one thought led to another. It was slightly unsettling to find out that the memories we revived that evening were from twenty or thirty years old. Yet, if I were to look at the last 15 years of my life, or even recent months…the recollections seemed strangely thinner. It was not that nothing had happened. If anything, life has been busier than ever. Yet somehow the experiences did not feel as firmly lodged in memory. This made me think, are we creating fewer memories today, even though we are having more experiences?

For example, let’s take music. I keep listening to Spotify or the local FM station in my daily commute. I tried remembering which was the most popular song that I would heard a number of times last year. Nothing stood out. Try this out for yourself, if you can recall… (According to Spotify’s annual wrap-up, the most streamed song in India in 2025 was “Raanjhan”). But this did not linger long enough to become a cultural marker in the way songs once did.

News moves even faster. One moment everyone is debating the curious episode involving robots episode at an AI Summit by Galgotias University. A few days later the conversation has shifted to something else entirely. I’m sure the Middle East interest will die within 72 hours of the ceasefire. Why, even in close circles, we hardly are talking about the India victory in the T20 World Cup..Everyone is busy discussing the upcoming IPL season.

All of this suggests that we have collectively become very good at something: moving on.

Moving on from one news cycle to another. From one cultural moment to the next. From one experience to the next before the previous one has had time to settle.

This pattern is visible even in the world of work. Earlier generations often spent decades within a single organisation, accumulating not just experience but also stories and shared memories. Today careers resemble a series of shorter engagements. LinkedIn is full of project-based work, consultants, fractional ‘something’. Employees move on from companies faster than before — and companies, it must be said, have also become quicker to move on from employees. Best part?, Neither side seems particularly surprised by the arrangement.

Part of the explanation lies in the rhythm of modern life. Earlier, life followed a relatively sequential path. School led to college, college to a job, and the job often stretched across decades. Experiences arrived in an orderly progression, like stations on a long train journey. When something unusual occurred, it interrupted the flow. People paused, talked about it, revisited it.

Today the map of life looks less like a straight railway line and more like the subway map of Tokyo — a dense network of lines intersecting, diverging and reconnecting in every direction. At any moment one can change tracks: switch careers, explore new interests, consume new streams of information, join new communities.

The number of possible journeys has multiplied.

Coincidentally, this relates to the rise of adoption of technology from about 15-20 years ago - Smartphone, Internet, Social Media, etc. Technology intensifies the ‘moving on’ effect. At the very moment an experience captures our attention, another one appears to replace it. A notification arrives. A new video trends. A new song begins playing. Before we have fully absorbed one moment, the next one has already claimed our attention.

Earlier, the world occasionally forced us to linger. A newspaper story stayed with us until the next edition arrived the following morning. A cricket victory remained in conversation until the next series months later. A popular song stayed on the radio long enough to embed itself in memory.

Those pauses between experiences allowed life to form chapters. Today those pauses are shrinking.

This does not mean we are experiencing less. If anything, we are experiencing far more — more music, more films, more news, more conversations. But experiences do not stay long enough to acquire depth. They are replaced before they have fully arrived.

Meaning often forms in the act of staying with something for a while — thinking about it, discussing it, revisiting it. When life moves too quickly from one scene to another, those reflective spaces quietly disappear.

Perhaps that is why reunions feel so powerful. For a few hours the rush of the present slows down. Stories return. Forgotten incidents resurface. Memories regain their colour.

In a world where life increasingly resembles a continuous stream of moments, these pauses begin to feel precious.

They are, in a sense, the intermissions of life.

And it may well be during those intermissions that our experiences finally get the chance to become memories.

For Ol’ Times’ Sake

2026-03-10T10:07:00.000+05:30

Last week, I attended a get-together of former colleagues from the Times of India Hyderabad office. For me, and many of us, it had been more than two decades since we had last worked together. The day had all the ingredients of a good reunion—food, music, drinks, laughter, and the slightly awkward but warm ritual of rediscovering faces that had once been part of everyday life.

The event had been wonderfully organised by a group of enthusiastic volunteers (Murthy Vadapalli, Ranjana Rudra, Suresh Kochattil, Navneet Mathur Padmini Kashyap and many others) who had put in the effort to track people down, coordinate schedules, and make the day happen. And judging by the smiles, the hugs, and the decibel levels in the room, their effort had clearly paid off. A big shout out to all the amazing folks!

As I wandered around the venue reconnecting with people from my past, it struck me that most of us were not there merely because an invitation had been sent. We were there because of something deeper.

Pride, perhaps, in having been part of an institution like The Times of India; Respect and affection for the manager (Anil Kumar) who had led the branch at the time; And above all, the memories of the teams we worked with—the everyday companionship of colleagues who, for a few years of our lives, were the people we spent more waking hours with than our own families.

The event itself was tagged as “Jab We Met.” But as the evening unfolded, I felt a more appropriate title might have been “For Ol’ Times’ Sake.” … not just for the wordplay :)…but the phrase captures something important about why we show up at such gatherings.

Because when we meet former colleagues after many years, we are not just meeting people.....We are meeting younger versions of ourselves.

At one point in time, we were all in the same boat. Young(er), hopeful, uncertain, trying to prove ourselves, figuring out careers and life at the same time. We were co-travellers in a journey whose destination none of us could quite see then.

A reunion is a chance to see where that journey has taken everyone.

Some stayed within the same industry, becoming veterans of the field we once entered as novices. Some moved into entirely different worlds. Some have done remarkably well for themselves, climbing ladders that perhaps did not even exist when we worked together. And some, unfortunately, seemed to have had a harder ride.

In quiet ways, reunions become moments of measurement—not in the competitive sense we associate with youth, but in a gentler, more reflective way. A kind of life yardstick. Where did the road take you? Where did it take me? Part curiosity, part introspection.

But perhaps the deeper reason lies elsewhere.

As we grow older, the currency with which the world values us slowly changes. When we are young, it is energy and speed that matter. Later in life, it becomes experience. And experience, unlike energy, cannot be displayed in real time. It is stored in memory.

Which is why gatherings like this often resemble a game of collective remembering. I could keep overhearing bits of conversations that went -

“Hey, do you remember…?”, Guess my name!”, “Remember that time when…?”

All around the room, fragments of the past floated through the air like familiar tunes. A joke from a long-forgotten meeting. A boss’s favourite phrase. A story about a deadline that once seemed like the end of the world.

Memory, it turns out, is a social activity. Alone, we remember imperfectly. Together, we reconstruct.

Someone recalls a detail we had forgotten. Someone else reminds us of the punchline. And suddenly an entire moment from twenty-five years ago springs back to life. Perhaps that is what reunions really are: small acts of collective archaeology. We dig through the hallowed ground of time and each one rediscover pieces that once we put together…we get a pottery of the person we once were.

This rediscover leads to something reassuring that even though life has taken each of us down different roads, there remains a stretch of the journey that belongs to all of us equally.

For a few years of our lives, we were colleagues. But for one evening again, we were simply co-travellers revisiting a shared past.

And perhaps that is why we gather….not just for the food, music, or nostalgia.

But for ol’ times’ sake.

#thingswedontnotice

The ABCD of Acronyms

2026-02-15T19:31:00.000+05:30

Sorry, I’ve been MIA for a few weeks. One of the enduring thing about working on projects for large MNC’s is that most of your day is occupied with RoB stuff. One thing that frightens me the most during these meetings and knowledge sharing sessions is CUA - Casual Use of Acronyms. Every company has its own alphabet soup, brewed carefully over decades. The same three letters can mean wildly different things depending on which corporate office you are working. One of the first thing I ask, when I start working for such companies is, do you have a glossary for the acronyms that you regularly use? Rarely is there one and you need to learn by asking. Sometimes I feel like a child picking up a new language.

It isn’t that acronyms were not part of our daily lexicon. But, earlier, it was simpler and kinder. In school, PTO meant Please Turn Over. Teachers insisted on put a dot after each alphabet to remind the reader that something was being shortened….not replaced. So, Please Turn Over was written P.T.O. Today, acronyms arrive fully formed, unapologetic, and permanent.

In my teens, I can across acronyms that masqueraded as a common word. The classic example was the TV series MASH…I always thought it was a cool name for a military based TV series, until my brother enlightened me that is was a short form for Mobile Army Surgical Hospital. Yes, Acronyms were slowly coming out of the footnotes in to the popular culture.

It was in the 90’s, with access to the Internet that I got drowned with flood of acronyms. An “ASL?” on ICQ or Yahoo! Chatroom felt like a secret code—age, sex, location—compressed into three letters that opened doors to entire conversations. That was perhaps during this period that acronyms crossed over from efficiency into identity. They stopped being mere abbreviations and started becoming social signals.

Now they are everywhere. At work, in WhatsApp groups, on social media. ICYDNK. TL;DR. FYI. TBA. Acronyms no longer explain; they assume. If you don’t know them, the problem is not the word—it’s you.

Originally, acronyms served a practical purpose. They shortened frequently used phrases in an age when writing was slow and space was precious. Some acronyms also helped in memory aid as mnemonics. But somewhere along the way, the logic reversed. We no longer create acronyms to save time or memorise; we create phrases so they can be a catchy acronym (or vice-versa). Language is bent, stretched, and sometimes tortured, just so it can collapse neatly into four capital letters that look good on a slide.

This is not accidental. Acronyms do something subtle but powerful: they create insiders.

To understand an acronym is to belong. To ask what it means is to confess ignorance. Acronyms flatten complexity into something manageable, but they also fence it off. In meetings, they allow people to speak quickly while thinking slowly. In organisations, they create the illusion of shared understanding, even when none exists.

There is also a deeper cultural comfort at play. Acronyms feel authoritative. A sentence sprinkled with them sounds decisive, global, professional. They carry the confidence of bureaucracy and the efficiency of machines. Saying “Let’s align on OKRs post QBR” sounds far more in control than admitting, “We are not entirely sure what we are measuring, or why.”

Acronyms also protect us from emotion. They sanitise language. A “layoff” becomes a “RIF.” A failure becomes a “learning.” A delay becomes a “realignment.” When words shrink, so does responsibility. Acronyms allow us to discuss serious things without fully feeling them.

Social media, of course, has taken this to its logical extreme. Acronyms now signal speed, relevance, and cultural literacy. To type in full is to appear earnest, even old-fashioned. Please just put out a HBD or HNY. Brevity is not just efficiency; it is status. If you know, you know. If you don’t—ICYDNK.

The past few years in India, in politics, acronyms have been taken to a new level. A level of subtle indoctrination/priming. The latest being renaming the Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MG-NREGA) to VB-G RAM G (Officially, it is supposed to be written with the spaces included)

What’s interesting is that even as technology gives us infinite space and instant voice notes, our words keep getting shorter. We compress language not because we must, but because we prefer to. Perhaps acronyms suit an age that values motion over meaning, participation over comprehension.

In reducing language, we reduce friction. But we also reduce reflection.

There was a time when dots between letters reminded us that something was missing and that a longer thought existed behind the shorthand. Today’s acronyms have no such modesty. They stand alone, fully confident, asking no questions.

Before I end, in case you were wondering what the ABCD in the title stood for? It is - Acronyms Becoming Confusing Daily.

The Comfortable Distance of Caring

2026-01-13T08:30:00.007+05:30

Few days back I was at CIMAR Hospital, Thrissur where I saw a ‘regular’ scenario. Couple of grandparents hovering over a newborn grandchild. There was a softness in their voices, an indulgence in their smiles, a patience that seemed endless. Every yawn was celebrated, and a grasp of their extended finger making them laugh. The new parents’ faces were a mix of happiness, joy, anxiousness, etc.

We always say that the grandparents love their grandchildren more than they ever loved their own children. What made me think was, why does display of love skip a generation? Then it struck me that perhaps it is not because the love is deeper, but because it is lighter.

Their own children came with timetables and school fees, fever charts and future anxieties. Grandchildren arrive free of such encumbrances. They can be adored without being managed, cuddled without consequence, returned safely to their parents when the crying starts. It is love, distilled—emotion without administration.

I’m not criticising. This is just an observation.

While this phenomenon of unencumbered love between grandparents-grandkids is age-old, what makes this particularly relatable today is how closely it mirrors a larger habit we are acquiring. We increasingly prefer forms of caring that stop short of responsibility. We like without engaging too deeply, support without sacrificing too much, feel strongly without being accountable for outcomes. It shows up in many small, everyday ways—in resident WhatsApp groups where affection for stray dogs runs high, but ownership remains carefully avoided; compassion is asserted, responsibility negotiated away. Grandparental love feels like the most intimate and socially acceptable version of this instinct: deep emotion without daily consequence, attachment without authorship.

Modern life, after all, has perfected distance. We can care remotely. A FaceTime with your near and dear ones, a forwarded petition stands in for protest, a heart emoji replaces presence, a strongly worded message substitutes for follow-through. Our emotions travel faster than our actions, and often arrive alone.

There was a time when caring was inseparable from consequence. To love a child was to raise one. To keep an animal was to feed it. To belong to a community was to show up—physically, repeatedly, inconveniently. Today, we have discovered the comfort of partial commitment. Enough involvement to feel good, not enough to feel trapped.

Perhaps this is why grandparental affection feels so pure. It resembles the kind of caring we increasingly prefer—intense but episodic, heartfelt but bounded. It fits neatly into a life already crowded with obligations. Love, but only when convenient. Concern, but not ownership.

Even language has adapted to this preference. We speak of “being there” emotionally, not practically. We champion causes, not chores. We want outcomes without processes, solutions without sweat. Responsibility, like excess baggage, is something we try to avoid carrying ourselves.

None of this makes us cruel. If anything, it suggests we are overwhelmed. In a world that demands constant attention, caring at a distance becomes a coping mechanism. It allows us to remain humane without being consumed.

And yet, something is lost in this bargain. There is a particular kind of meaning that comes only from responsibility—the slow, unglamorous work of staying, fixing, repeating. Grandparents get to enjoy the poetry of love because someone else is handling the prose.

Perhaps that is the quiet truth this scene reveals. We have not stopped caring. We have simply learned to outsource its weight.

And in doing so, we have made love easier—but also, a little less complete.

(image source: shutterstock)

When Does Adulthood Actually Begin?

2025-12-28T10:47:00.004+05:30

These days, many serious thoughts begin not with books or conversations, but with a social media post glimpsed in passing.

A Facebook post by someone in my network asked: Is 18 the right age for adulthood? No preachy stuff, no numbers or data sources, no opinionated copy to go along with it. Just the question. I might have moved on, except for one small detail. My own child will be approaching that milestone in a few years. Suddenly, this was no longer another ‘interesting’ post; this felt closer, personal and slightly unsettling.

Eighteen has always been a curious number to carry so much weight. Nothing changes at midnight. I did not wake up wiser the next morning, when I turned Eighteen. And yet, by law and logic, you are expected to be an adult — capable of decisions with long shadows.

Adulthood, never really arrives on birthdays. It creeps in through responsibility, through small moments when help don’t arrive on time. You don’t become an adult so much as realise, one day, that no one is coming to sort things out for you.

What seems to be shifting today is not the age of adulthood, but the conditions that once quietly produced it.

For many of us, our children’s childhood has become safer, more enclosed, more thoughtfully designed. Children move through a sequence of protected spaces. They spend time inside gated communities, school buses, private transport — travelling from one supervised environment to another. Streets, once classrooms of uncertainty, have vanished from everyday life. Independence has become an optional add-on rather than a built-in feature.

Earlier, walking alone, getting lost, dealing with strangers weren’t character-building exercises. They were simply life. Exposure came bundled with movement. Responsibility arrived without announcement.

Technology deepens this cocoon. Play still exists, but often in worlds that allow instant exits. Games can be paused. Failures reset. Consequences reversed. There is intensity without permanence, engagement without exposure. Life, meanwhile, does not offer an undo button.

Parenting, too, has changed…not in love, but in proximity. Parents are more present, more informed, more involved. Problems are anticipated, discomfort quickly interpreted as distress. The intention is care. The side effect is that impact is often absorbed before it reaches the child.

What we may be witnessing is not delayed adulthood, but deferred initiation. Adulthood is not taught; it is stumbled into. And stumbling requires uneven ground.

The debate about whether eighteen is “too young” assumes adulthood is a switch that flips. In reality, it behaves more like a muscle. It develops through use. Responsibility, ambiguity, self-regulation — these grow only when exercised. When life remains excessively cushioned, the muscle stays underworked, however old the body becomes.

There is a quiet irony here. We have made childhood safer than ever, and then worry when confidence takes longer to arrive. We have replaced friction with facilitation, and then wonder why independence feels delayed.

The real question, then, is not whether eighteen is the right age for adulthood. It is whether we are still creating enough unsupervised moments for adulthood to arrive at all. And perhaps, as parents and as a society, the harder task is not protecting children endlessly — but knowing when to step back and let life do some of the teaching.

Life, Subscribed

2025-12-13T09:57:00.006+05:30

Every week, my phone reminds me of my new relationship with the world. An SMS or a WhatsApp notification for something I have, but never actually own. Access to Amazon Prime, Spotify, Kindle, Dropbox that stores the fragments of my life, books and files I might never read, in places I will never visit. There was a time not very long ago when the things we ‘wanted’ were the things we owned. Music came on tapes and CDs whose covers we gently straightened after use. Encyclopaedias lined shelves, heavy with authority. Books carried the thumbprints of those who read them before us. These objects announced themselves by occupying space.

Today, so much of what we “have” never actually comes home. Music floats in the cyber space, movies wait in the cloud in queue, a verse of poetry arrives through a clean, content-approved notification. Even memories — once tucked into boxes or photo albums — now live on remote servers, rented back to us through storage plans. The world has shifted from possession to access, so quietly that we barely noticed.

Ownership used to demand care. A CD needed to be handled with respect, a book returned in almost the same condition. That responsibility tied us to the object. Subscription frees us from all that — we are not caretakers anymore, just users who keep the meter running. Convenience is the new covenant. Do nothing, and everything auto-renews.

In parallel, even the self has taken on a subscription model. Morning calm comes via a mindfulness app. Fitness arrives monthly, one payment at a time. Motivation can be unlocked in weekly instalments. We rent our discipline and outsource our resolve because becoming who we want to be is now a product category. It is as if identity itself has become a series of trial versions — cancel anytime.

Ironically, ancient wisdom had long insisted that nothing material is truly ours. The wise spoke on the futility of, ‘This is Mine’…. the digital economy has simply given that idea a business plan. The difference is that earlier, the idea that the eternal soul lives in a rented body and letting go was a spiritual act. Today, it is a commercial feature.

And the signs of this shift are everywhere: photographs that exist only as icons floating in a cloud; childhood memories secured by subscription plans; remastered playlists replacing music that once crackled because we had played it too often; or you either see-or-miss TV shows

What has changed isn’t merely how we consume things, but how we relate to them. The temporary has become the default, and permanence a problem we would rather not solve. The weight of ownership has been replaced by the lightness of access — and with that, the meaning of “having” has quietly dissolved into “streaming.”

Maybe this is the most unnoticed transformation of our time: when everything is rented, what remains precious is the rare thing we can still call our own — a page with our handwriting in the margin, a song worn out by affection, a thought we stayed with long enough to make personal.

In a life subscribed to everything and committed to little, permanence doesn’t arrive automatically anymore. It waits to be noticed, then chosen…..and then defended.

Two Weddings and a Funeral

2025-10-25T14:34:00.005+05:30

There is something prophetic about the movie title “Four Weddings and a Funeral.”

In real life, for most of us, it could be one, two, or three occasions. The number is not the import, the import is that’s roughly how often we meet people who once mattered to us.

Old family friends, relations one generation up, neighbours from the homes we grew up in — all exist somewhere in our phones, remembered but unreached. We know their birthdays because Facebook reminds us, and we acknowledge them ‘enthusiastically' with a cheerful emoji, a quick wish, a sense of obligation fulfilled.

We even find ourselves in their cities sometimes — for work, for weddings, or for a holiday — but rarely do we think of meeting. “Next time,” we tell ourselves, comforted by the thought that their faces are just a click away. The photograph on our feed becomes proof that the relationship is still alive.

Once upon a time, we didn’t need reasons to meet. People simply dropped in. Someone would be passing through the neighbourhood and would stop by for a cup of tea. Families lived in casual proximity…unannounced visits, shared snacks, idle gossip that lasted hours. Relationships were maintained by accident, not by effort.

Today, even intimacy needs an invitation. The calendar decides when affection is appropriate. Weddings, milestone birthdays, and funerals are our socially sanctioned reunions. We see the same faces at these occasions, all smiling with the same surprise: “So good to see you after so long!” The joy is genuine, the nostalgia warm — but beneath it is an unspoken truth: we don’t meet unless life forces us to.

Technology has softened the guilt of absence. Social media has replaced physical visits with digital gestures like, likes, heart emojis, and “thinking of you” messages that require no real thought. The algorithm remembers our relationships for us; we only have to react.

Perhaps it’s not lack of love that keeps us apart but the efficiency of modern connection. We have built systems that let us care without showing up. Emotional outsourcing, disguised as convenience.

In some ways, it mirrors our times perfectly. We no longer cook; we order. We no longer write; we forward. We no longer visit; we “stay in touch.” The effort once needed to sustain relationships has been redesigned out of our lives. The friction that created warmth has been replaced by the smoothness of convenience.

And so, we continue to gather at weddings and funerals, on occasions large enough to demand attendance, dramatic enough to remind us of the lives we share but rarely inhabit. We hug, we promise to meet again soon, we mean it in that moment — and then, life slides quietly back into its scheduled flow.

Perhaps that’s the new rhythm of connection — a series of highlights stitched together by silence. And maybe that’s what growing up now means: learning to live with people we love, mostly in memory.

WhatsApp and the Art of Social Engineering

2025-10-01T10:19:00.009+05:30

There was a time when opinion was formed in public spaces. The village square, the tea shop, the office water-cooler, or the pubs (pub is actually a short form for ‘public house’)—these were places where ideas were exchanged, debated, often loudly. Today, our new square is a green-and-white screen. WhatsApp has become the digital equivalent of the chowk, but with one key difference: it is quieter, more efficient, and infinitely more manipulative.

In its early years, WhatsApp was just an SMS that didn’t cost money. We sent festival greetings, birthday wishes, and bad jokes accompanied by even worse clipart. But somewhere along the way, it became more than a messenger — it became a mechanism. A space where information was not just shared, but shaped.

Consider the resident WhatsApp group — an invention that has redefined the way we live together. It is part bulletin board, part kangaroo court, part stand-up comedy stage. A lost slipper gets the same urgency as a missing child. A dog-bite incident unleashes a torrent of legal interpretations, moral philosophy, and public shaming, all before your coffee gets cold. What begins as information quickly becomes mobilisation. People are nudged into action/outrage by the simple fact of being seen not to act.

And nowhere is this power more visible than in politics. Parties have built elaborate WhatsApp armies, each group carefully seeded with “content” designed to stir, to divide, to energise. It is the digital version of sending the village drummer to beat the nagada before a big announcement — except now, the drumbeat never stops. The morning begins with a meme, noon brings a rumour, evening ends with a rally video. The brilliance lies in its intimacy: it doesn’t feel like propaganda, it feels like a friend forwarding you something “interesting.”

WhatsApp’s true genius lies in how it has gamified participation. The two blue ticks are not just read receipts — they are social contracts. Silence now speaks as loudly as words. In many families, “Why didn’t you reply on the group?” is the new “Why didn’t you come to the wedding?” We are being engineered into responsiveness, into belonging, into taking sides.

And just like the temple bells of old, WhatsApp has given us new rituals to follow. Independence Day cannot pass without the tricolour GIF making its annual pilgrimage to your phone. Gandhi Jayanti means someone will forward that same sepia-toned photo of Bapu with the spinning wheel. Diwali brings its fireworks-laden greetings; New Year’s Eve, its blinking “Happy 20XX.” Even chain messages (“Forward this to 10 people for good luck”) have become our new prasad — half faith, half habit.

Historically, societies have always used rituals to create cohesion — the evening prayer bell, the weekly market day, the town crier’s announcement. WhatsApp has simply digitised the impulse. The little ping is our new temple bell, summoning us to gather, to react, to have an opinion.

And what is remarkable is how willingly we participate. We may grumble about the good-morning GIFs, but we still check them. We cannot resist the little green dot, the promise of connection, the fear of missing out on the latest mini-drama.

Perhaps that is WhatsApp’s most subtle act of social engineering: it has made participation the default. To not react, to not forward, to not wish is an act of rebellion. In a world where belonging is everything, who wants to be the rebel?

The next time your phone pings with a “breaking news” forward, a call to protest, or an Independence Day GIF, notice what happens inside you. That small tug, that little voice that says, “If I don’t respond, someone will notice.” That is not just you being polite. That is an invisible system shaping your behaviour — one notification at a time.

WhatsApp hasn’t just connected us — it has converted us.

The New Currency of “Busy”

2025-09-22T16:39:00.002+05:30

Ask someone if they’re coming for dinner next Friday and you’ll rarely hear a simple “yes” or “no.” What you’ll get instead is a polite reply: “Let’s see… I’ll try.” Or maybe, a friend asks your confirmation to a travel couple of months later and in all probability you’d say, “November is still far off, I’m not sure how I’ll be placed.” (At least that is what I did). Nowadays, we have become culturally allergic to certainty.

The RSVP has been replaced by the NSVP: Not Sure, Will Verify and Possibly Decline.

This hesitation is less about logistics and more about posture. To say “yes” is to admit you’re available. To say “no” is to close the door too early. The safest and most diplomatic answer is maybe. It signals both importance and possibility.

Being busy has become the new way of being important. “Crazy day” is no longer a complaint—it’s a humblebrag. ‘Rain check’ is a phrase that has got into the daily lexicon in India. Busyness is not just a state; it’s a status.

In mythology, gods were always busy. Vishnu was perpetually managing cosmic balance, Shiva locked either in meditation or his cosmic dance, Indra handling celestial warfare. In fact, our Puranas says that if the Gods even just blinks, the world will go into darkness for thousands of years.

Mortals, meanwhile, waited. To be kept waiting was proof that you were in the presence of power. Earlier, it was the big bosses, film stars, and politicians that kept the world waiting. But now it has percolated down to us mere mortals too. Perhaps that explains why we too now cultivate busyness as a form of soft divinity—it keeps us beyond easy reach.

Popular culture reflects this shift. Think of Rajesh Khanna in Anand, sitting on a swing, singing, and waiting for life to arrive—time itself was a character. Or, think of Sanjeev Kumar crooning, Dil Dhoondta hain phir wahi….Contrast that with Hrithik Roshan in ZNMD, perpetually on his phone, running late, torn between deadlines and desires. Even in rom-coms, calendars have become villains. In Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani, the love story is less about two people and more about finding a gap between his treks and her career. Hollywood too has followed suit—Hugh Grant in Notting Hill could idle in a bookshop for love; Ryan Gosling in La La Land must schedule love between auditions and jazz gigs. Google Calendar is the new third wheel.

Contrast this with the past. A village wedding invitation was not a tentative “let’s see” but a firm commitment. Calendars were emptier, but priorities clearer. Showing up was an obligation, not an optional extra.

What has changed is not our schedules but our relationship with them. We no longer wear jewellery to show we matter; we wear our cluttered calendars. The humble “crazy day” has become a badge of honour. The more double-booked, the more indispensable.

The irony, of course, is that busyness produces very little. It is the performance of productivity, not productivity itself. But in an economy where attention is scarce, performing busyness is a way of ensuring that one’s time—and therefore one’s self—retains value.

We are all Vishnus now, pretending to hold up the world, while secretly hoping no one notices that much of our busyness is self-invented.

Or, maybe, our busyness is a prelude to show that our presence is priceless.

Sapiens, Desi-style

2025-08-29T10:50:00.005+05:30

The other morning, my wife was looking out of the window as the school bus pulled away. A few children, as usual, had missed it. Casually, she remarked: “Have you noticed? The ones who are mostly on time are South Indians, and the ones who aren’t tend to be North Indians.” I thought to myself, it isn’t about the kids, it is about rice and wheat, reflecting on what I read longtime back in Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind.

Yuval Noah Harari has a way of making us see the invisible. In Sapiens, Harari writes about the difference between rice and wheat civilisations. Rice, he points out, is a demanding crop. It needs constant tending, precise water control, endless labor. Wheat, on the other hand, grows with less fuss. Plant it, pray for rain, and wait. From this difference, he says, emerge two distinct work ethics — rice societies become disciplined, cooperative, and patient; wheat societies lean toward individualism, bursts of energy, and risk-taking.

One needn’t need to travel across continents to see this divide.In India, we carry both these temperaments. The South and East are cultures of rice; the North and West, cultures of wheat.

The rice-eating regions seem to carry in their cultural DNA a certain patience, a belief in endurance. Education here becomes a long-distance marathon: endless hours of tuition, ritualised preparation for exams, the stubborn slog toward IITs and UPSC. After the medieval times, it was people from Bengal and Madras presidency who became the hands and legs in the Indian bureaucracy. Even today, bureaucracy bears this stamp: meticulous files, rigorous procedures, an abiding faith in rules. Even in the arts, be it Carnatic music, Bharatanatyam, the Bengali literature, or Rabindra Sangeet — mastery comes only after years of daily, almost devotional repetition. Rice societies thrive not on spectacle but on discipline.

The wheat-eating North and West tell a different story. Here, history is full of bursts of intensity — of armies and invasions, of clan loyalties and feudal dramas. Work is not a steady climb but a leap, followed by a pause, and then another leap. Education often carries the stamp of jugaad: street-smart confidence, shortcuts, the ability to negotiate with the system rather than surrender to it. Even in arts, the tempo of Kathak or the josh of Bhangra is visible. The North is not afraid of flamboyance; it celebrates scale, energy, assertion. Festivals are noisier, weddings grander, politics brasher. If the rice world creates software coders and civil servants, the wheat world produces politicians, entrepreneurs, and entertainers.

Placed together, they form a peculiar Indian duality: a country that is both methodical and chaotic, diligent and opportunistic, patient and restless. Our global reputation in IT services owes much to the rice ethic of meticulous execution, while our entrepreneurial and political swagger draws from the wheat ethic of boldness and improvisation. One India builds the process; the other breaks it open.

Perhaps this is India’s peculiar advantage — to be both rice and wheat at once. The future truly belongs to this country for we are patient enough to wait, and restless enough to leap.

(Note: While reading the above, I realise that I might be accused of stereotyping people from one region & other. That never has been my intention. Annam Gehunam, non persona. ;))

The Seasoning We Stopped Doing

2025-08-22T14:20:00.000+05:30

I heard the word “seasoning” on a cooking show the other day and realised we almost never use it outside the kitchen anymore. It used to be a wider verb. A new cricket bat had to be seasoned— Linseed oiled, wrapped, knocked for hours until it felt right in the hands. As an aside, the bats used to highlight if they were with ‘fish-cover’ which for a long time I thought was a bat wrapped in fish-skin..until years later I realised, it was a kind of plastic wrap on the blade of the bat.

I remember my friends who kept reminding me, sitting behind their new two-wheeler, while I rode - to keep the speeds low and avoid sudden bursts. I think it too was called tuning the engine and some called it seasoning period till its first service. Seasoning was not garnish. It was patience made practical.

There were other versions. New leather school shoes needed a few careful, blistered days before they softened and became yours. I remember having a fountain pen (For those from Hyderabad will remember the MISAK pens) and the nib improved after pages of writing; your hand taught it a slant. Raw denim took months to fall in line with your knees. Every musician knows that a violin bow needs rosin and restraint; even a cheap guitar sounds better after the strings have stretched and settled. In the kitchen, a cast-iron tawa only behaves after repeated oiling and heat. An earthen matka is soaked before it holds water without drinking it. Before Diwali, the earthen diyas are soaked and dried before use. Even buildings once asked for time—the old lime and concrete cures that nobody dares to rush.

We used to season not just things, but ourselves. First weeks at a new job were for apprenticeship, not instant impact. A team was allowed to find its rhythm. A marriage understood that “settling in” was a phase, not a flaw. Children were told to practise, to let boredom harden into attention. Seasoning was simply how the world made space for becoming.

Even in advertising agencies, ideas were allowed to soak, before the actual work started. In fact, we were asked to sleep over it before further discussion. We allowed a decision to wait till morning.

Now the pressure is different. Ideas need to be worked instantaneously. Clients ask for day-one deliverables and thirty-day impact. Devices must be “ready out of the box.” Shoes promise zero break-in. Jeans arrive pre-washed to look lived in. Cars advertise engines that don’t need running-in. Products come pre-marinated; recipes promise thirty minutes. Even emotions are asked to move quickly—name it, fix it, move on. We’ve kept the result and removed the time before it.

The cost shows up in small ways. Things are returned because they don’t fit perfectly on day one. Feet blister because we never expected new leather to resist. Teams fray because they were never permitted to gel. Ideas feel thin because they were never allowed to sit overnight. We think we’ve eliminated inefficiency; often we’ve just skipped the part that makes something take our shape.

Seasoning was never about romance. It was a method. It prevented brittleness. It reduced regret. It helped a bat find its middle, an engine find its temper, a relationship find its pace. It was the patient, invisible work that turned ownership into belonging.

Perhaps the word hasn’t disappeared; it has been crowded out by speed. If we bring it back, even quietly, we might leave a little room in our lives for things to arrive properly. Oil the new bat before the weekend game. Give the scooter its gentle first thousand kilometres. Wear the stiff shoes at home for an hour. Let the new teammate have a month of questions.

In a culture that prizes verification and velocity, seasoning reminds us that some of the best fits are not found—they are formed. We can still have efficiency. We just don’t have to have it immediately.

Coffee, Tea, and I

2025-08-12T14:32:00.002+05:30

Coincidentally, I’ve been coming across references to tea and coffee over the past few weeks. An article on the Matcha craze in Japan. The sudden fall in coffee prices in India due to surplus production in Brazil (no, I’m not into commodities trading—I have a client who owns a coffee estate and exports, so I keep a Google alert on coffee). And during a quick trip to Hyderabad—famous for its Irani chai and Osmania biscuits—I found myself in a group where everyone ordered morning coffee except one person, who asked for tea. These little moments stirred up a range of thoughts about these two beverages. Some unfiltered free flowing stuff.

I’d like to start by saying that I love both my cuppas—coffee and tea. If it is coffee then preferably filter coffee.

We all know the regional split. In India, coffee is preferred in the South, while tea rules the North and most of the rest of the country. In North Indian homes, it’s always tea—sweet, milky, and boiling over with routine. In the South, coffee is less sweet, with a hint of bitterness. It’s as if in the North, the day begins with optimism; in the South, with pragmatism.

Tea announces itself loudly, boisterously. It boils, froths, and is bubbling. It spills into your day with urgency and familiarity. Coffee arrives in slow motion. It wafts in—bitter, self-assured, unhurried.

But it’s not just about taste and territory. There’s more.

Tea is for friends. “Chai pe milte hain.” “Chai pe charcha.” It’s the drink of the everyday. It breaks ice, bridges gaps, and binds people. You’ll find it everywhere—from homes to dhabas to roadside tapris with a radio playing 90s hits. It doesn’t demand attention. It gives it.

Coffee, on the other hand, is less accommodating. It prefers a setting. It comes with intent. “Let’s catch up over a cup of coffee” implies something is to be achieved—work to be done, an impression to be made. It’s the drink of pitch meetings and first dates, where both parties pretend to be slightly more well-read than they are.

Historically, while tea seeped into everyday life—from kullads in UP to cutting glasses in Mumbai to 1 cup, 1 MT (empty) in Hyderabad —coffee was curated. Its modern identity owes much to promotion. India (and Indian) Coffee Houses weren’t just cafés; they were clubs of quiet ambition. Coffee was aspirational before “aspirational” became a keyword in a strategy deck.

You’ll never find coffee in a kullad. You’ll rarely find it for 10 rupees. It doesn’t like being common. Perhaps that’s why coffee still carries the scent of seriousness. It’s the beverage of deadlines and decisions. Tea, meanwhile, continues to be easy with itself—happy to be reheated, shared, and served in cracked cups without complaint.

Tea is casual; coffee is calibrated.
Tea is expressive; coffee is performative.
Tea in India is unassuming; coffee is pretentious.

Tea feels like it studied in India. Coffee feels like it studied abroad. Tea pairs with samosas, biscuits, or pakoras. Coffee insists on a cookie (not a biscuit), a croissant, or a slice of sourdough.

Tea is binary—plain or masala. Coffee is a multiverse: instant, filter, espresso, cappuccino, pour-over, latte, americano, affogato, and more.

Tea is TikTok. Coffee is LinkedIn.
Tea makes you pause. Coffee makes you present.

Tea is this. Coffee is that.
And I? I’m sometimes this, sometimes that.

In the end, it’s not about choosing sides. Some mornings I’m brewed for writing a blog post (like this). Other days I’m filtered for PowerPoint.

The Signing Off of Signatures

2025-08-05T18:47:00.002+05:30

I just got my DSC (Digital Signature Certificate) renewed the other day, and it struck me with increasing use of DSC, the last option of the actual signing of the signature is vanishing.

It took me back to when I was 15, sitting in the classroom, scribbling endlessly in the pages of my rough book—practicing my signature before the board exams. Back then, our teachers told us with great solemnity, “This is your identity. It can never change.”

I tried loops, underlines, bold initials, even dramatic flourishes. My rough book was a battlefield of squiggles, each one asking, Is this me? An uncle - family friend, who fancied himself amongst other things, a graphologist, made it worse by explaining how a signature revealed personality—slanting upwards meant ambition, a straight line meant stability, clarity, etc. I wanted a signature I’d never get wrong, because it wasn’t just a mark. It was me on paper.

Giving your signature felt like a rite of passage. Parents would hand you a cheque to withdraw money, and you’d sign your name at the back. That small act felt exhilarating—almost like the bank account was secretly yours.

And yes, in my growing up years, we mocked those who used their thumb impression instead of signature. “Angoota chaap,” we said, a term for the illiterate. Funny how karma works. Today, all of us—digitally literate and professionally polished—press our thumbs on biometric scanners. The thumbprint has returned, not as shame but as authentication. As an aside, if and when you have any reason to go to a physical bank, you’ll notice, if lucky, a ball-pen dangling near the deposit slips..but for sure there will be no ink pads around.

Somewhere along the way, the signature slipped into obsolescence.
Cheques are rare. Forms are online. Applications are DocuSigned. Bank accounts open with Aadhaar OTPs. Even when someone asks for a signature now, it feels ceremonial—present, but not essential. Even courts now accept IP addresses or 16-bit hex numbers as proof of consent.

A signature once told a story. It leaned forward in ambition or slouched in hesitation. It danced, it swirled, it expressed personality. A fingerprint or an OTP tells no story. It merely says: Yes, this is you.

And here lies the quiet shift. We’ve moved from expressing identity to verifying identity, from authorship to acknowledgment, from the intimacy of a flourish to the impersonality of a ping.

A signature was slow and deliberate—a tiny ritual that said, I take responsibility.
An OTP is instant and transactional. It says, The system approves me.

This is the larger change that hides in plain sight. In the pursuit of convenience and security, we have outsourced our very selfhood to the system. The pause that once reminded us “this act is mine” has disappeared. Identity is no longer something we perform; it is something we are granted.

In a world obsessed with speed, the personal has become optional. There is no time for winks and curls. The system doesn’t want your story. It wants your compliance.

And so the loops and tails fade into memory. Our identity now lives in six-digit codes, green ticks, and faceless scans.

We used to sign our name to announce our presence and consent.
Now, we just sign in.

The Lost Generation of Artists, Writers, and Sportspersons

2025-07-30T12:34:00.000+05:30

Every now and then, a familiar surname floats past on my feed—attached to a guitar solo, a zonal cricket match, or a small gallery exhibit. Someone’s son is representing their university in a zonal cricket tournament. Someone’s daughter is performing Carnatic vocals at a college fest. A painting’s gone up in a local gallery. A guitar solo performed at a bar gig has made its way to an YouTube channel or Soundcloud.

These updates are almost always accompanied by a proud caption. But what catches my attention isn’t the post—it’s the parent, for they are my childhood friend.

I remember that the dad was once a Ranji-level cricketer who now manages a regional office for a bank. I know the mother who once sketched brilliantly in the margins of notebooks but now heads a Pharma company. Another was an aspiring guitarist in a college band before trading riffs for revenue targets.

Their dreams didn’t exactly die. They were deferred. Placed on pause by the demands of a different time.

Ours was a generation that grew up in the gap—between aspiration and access. Talented, but told to be careful. Encouraged, but redirected. They weren’t denied dreams—just nudged away from them in the name of practicality.

Art was a hobby. Sport was a phase. Music was for Sundays.
Engineering was the path. Banking was the outcome.

Years later, life seems to bend gently towards the very dreams they once placed on the shelf.

Today, their children picks up the brushes, bats, tabla or a tennis racket. And this time, no one’s pulling them away. In fact, the support is often so structured that it feels almost strategic.

Partly, it is because that the the world changed. There are now careers in creativity, medals in sport, money in the unthinkable. But more than that, the parents changed. With age came stability. And with stability, a second chance—one lived not through themselves, but through their children.

This is not always about pressure or projection. It’s often subtle. Quiet. Even unconscious. A guitar left lying around. A football class signed up for. A school play encouraged, a drawing exhibited. Sometimes, it’s as simple as not stopping them—because no one stopped you and you still remember how that felt.

We often think of success as a straight line. But for many, it's generational. What was once a deviation becomes a destination—for the next in line.

Even in popular culture, the pattern plays out. We hear about many stories in cinema or cricket. Anu Malik’s father was a respected but lesser-known composer. Mahesh Bhatt’s own parents had strained ties with the film world. Rakesh Roshan was a struggling actor before becoming a producer and launching Hrithik. Chunky Pandey didn’t quite make it big—his daughter did. The Kapoors (Boney-Anil wala), now into its third generation, had a beginning that was far from stardom.

In many cases, children don’t inherit fame. They complete it.

And maybe that’s what’s quietly happening around us.

A generation of middle-class India that became engineers, bank managers, bureaucrats, and marketers—also carried within them poets, dancers, painters, and players. They didn’t abandon those selves—they archived them. And now, with life’s responsibilities handled, they’re making room for them to return.

Not through regret. But through revival.

And so we see a silent restoration taking place. Of lost talents and paused passions. Of art, music, and sport returning to families that once let them go.

It’s easy to dismiss this as projection. But maybe it’s something deeper—a desire for emotional continuity. A wish to see some version of yourself not just survive, but thrive. Even if it’s wearing your child’s shoes.

The good news is that this quiet redemption is producing a new wave of talent—grounded, supported, and self-aware.

The better news is that our dreams don’t really vanish. Sometimes, they simply take the long way home—skipping a generation, and returning with better timing

Rupees and Reason

2025-07-22T14:12:00.001+05:30

There are three things that triggered this post.

One, I’ve been working on a marketing brief for a financial client. As part of it, I’ve been digging into the context of money and wealth. Two, few days back, I was talking to my mom, and she made a passing reference about a relative visiting my native place He is generally treated with high reverence as he has made himself “successful”, and doing good favours for the extended family. Well, how he became successful…that’s a topic for a different conversation. Three, a couple of weekends ago, I met an old friend for breakfast at a Udipi restaurant. After the dosas, puris, and filter coffee, the bill arrived, and like clockwork, we tossed in a 20 rupees tip — less a gesture of generosity, more a tick mark on the social contract. I was left with a nagging feeling on why didn’t I tip more. I thought to myself, if we were at a shiny café where the coffee costs three times more and comes with a heart on the foam, and there’s already a 40 INR service charge on the bill, we don’t even blink. We pay. We Instagram. We leave.

We don’t notice it, but money — or rather, the context of it — subtly redraws our sense of right and wrong.

We tip based on ambience, not effort. The waiter at the Udipi restaurant would have done 10x more work than the barista who called my name to pick my order at the cafe.
We question the street-side chaat guy’s hygiene, but not the ₹160 plate sandwich toast from a similar set-up—now just called a "Food Truck."
We hesitate to tip a food delivery rider, but pay “platform charges” to Swiggy or Zomato without a murmur.

What looks like generosity is sometimes something else entirely — a performance of morality, carefully staged for effect.

Consider how we view theft. A maid who is suspected of taking ₹100 is labelled a thief. There’s a moral taint, a breach of trust. But a startup unnecessarily burning—or worse, defaulting—crores of venture funding? That’s “a risk that didn’t pay off.” Some even admire the audacity.

A salaried employee tweaks their ITR to avoid a few thousand in taxes and calls it “smart planning.” But those same people will forward WhatsApp messages condemning corporate tax fraud. We draw ethical lines in direct proportion to financial ones.

It’s not that we are inherently dishonest. It’s just that money has this strange way of creating moral blind spots. When a poor person bends a rule, it feels like a transgression. When a rich person does it, it feels like strategy.

Even our idea of generosity shifts with scale. You rarely see people drop money into a homeless person’s cup on a non-busy street. But at a temple or dargah, the same hand becomes looser with change. Virtue seems to come with better packaging during festivals. One wonders—is it kindness, or just virtue-signalling dressed as tradition?

Historically, we’ve judged people less for how they made their money and more for how they displayed it. Much of old Indian business wealth came from murky origins — opium trade, wartime profiteering, license raj barters done in smoky backrooms. But as wealth grew, so did reverence. Philanthropic institutions were named after the very families who had once bent the rules to build them. If you build a hospital wing, your past is politely forgotten.

In a strange way, money has become the new detergent. It doesn't just buy influence — it buys moral amnesty. It rebrands. It recasts. It makes questionable choices look bold, and silence seem dignified.

In a world increasingly run on optics, even morality begins to look for better lighting. A donation link on LinkedIn gets you more social capital than years of quiet volunteering. CSR isn’t just responsibility anymore — it’s PR strategy.

Perhaps the realisation that our moral compass doesn’t always point true north. It shifts with context, convenience, and currency.
What feels like integrity in one situation might seem like indulgence in another.
And when the terrain is tilted by money, even the most well-meaning compass begins to wobble.

We say money changes people.
Maybe what it really changes is how we see them.

The Luggage We No Longer Carry

2025-07-16T10:30:00.002+05:30

Few days back, I was strolling (pun intended) around in a mall looking at suitcases. Nowadays, the market is filled with either the nylon types or the light, wiggly kind—polypropylene hard (or soft?) cases. But not long ago, there was a time when travel meant hauling around weight—literally. Steel trunks that needed two people to lift. I remember, in my childhood, we had either VIP or Aristocrat suitcases that we had to sit on to close the bulging lids. Even the duffle bags we carried had zippers that threatened mutiny. No, they did not come with wheels, and usually the handles gave way every few trips.

Luggage had gravity. It said you were going somewhere, and taking everything with you—even the extra just-in-case-we-need stuff.

Today, suitcases are different. They glide. They spin. Some even follow you like loyal pets. They’re made of polycarbonate or polypropylene (I don’t know the difference), boast of smart compartments, and weigh next to nothing. These days, when airlines charge travellers a bomb for an additional 10 grams of check-in luggage, we learn to carry just enough. The goal is clear: travel light.

This shift isn’t just about technology or convenience. Nor is it just about travel. It reflects something deeper. We are learning, slowly, to offload. To carry less.

It shows in what we pack—but also in what we no longer do.

Books have been replaced by e-readers. Maps by GPS. Our fashion is about mix-and-match hacks. Even the bulky photo albums, once a full pouch of prints and negatives, are now stored in the cloud. We travel the world with a cabin bag and a phone. If we see anyone at the baggage carousel with more than two suitcases, we look at them with mild disdain—for carrying excess.

And it’s not just physical baggage we’re shedding.

Conversations about mental health are more common. Therapy, once whispered about, is now bookmarked on Instagram. People are learning to talk. To process. To let go of things that were previously folded neatly and shoved into an emotional corner for decades.

Relationships too reflect this shift. Divorce no longer carries the same taboo it once did. Many are walking out not in anger, but in quiet agreement. The “mutual” in mutual separation is not just legal—it’s emotional. A recognition that not everything must be endured. That we can part without punishing ourselves.

Even workplaces, in their own jargon-filled way, acknowledge this. Boundary setting, well-being days, right to disconnect—these are all signs of a culture trying, however imperfectly, to loosen its grip on the idea of carrying everything, all the time.

Even in our homes, the storerooms have quietly disappeared. The lofts too have become smaller—marking a subtle shift in how much space we’re willing to allocate for things we don’t generally need.

There was a time when life was about accumulation. More things. More duties. More expectations. Now, increasingly, we are becoming curators of our load—consciously deciding what stays and what goes.

But it’s not always comfortable. Many of us grew up believing that worth came from carrying more—responsibilities, silence, pain, the weight of what will people say. To carry was to care. To unburden was to be selfish.

Yet somewhere along the way, a quiet shift began. A new culture of saying, “I don’t have to carry this anymore.”

And that’s where we are now. Lighter luggage. Shorter explanations. Cleaner exits. We are not necessarily freer—but we are becoming less afraid of letting go.

Perhaps this is the new maturity—not endurance, but editorship.

In today’s world, it’s not how much we carry, but how wisely we choose what we carry forward.

Time, Once Upon a Time

2025-07-12T08:22:00.004+05:30

There is one thing that is missing from the walls of my home for many years now. They used to be hung there, steady and visible—watching over time as it passed. I’m talking about — the calendar. You didn’t check a calendar. You glanced at it. As you walked into a room. As you stirred your morning tea. Time was not summoned; it was absorbed.

Not just calendars. The rooms included the wall-clocks , the tabletop clocks, and the random wristwatches lying on top of the centre table (we called it teapoy) or on the dressing table. Yes, there was a time when time was all around us. Not hidden in apps or tucked inside phones, but present and visible—on walls, on wrists, in corners of the room. It was ambient. It was as if we were surrounded by physical manifestations of time.

While the other devices are still kicking around struggling for relevance, it is the calendars that has disappeared from our homes. Together, they offered a rhythm to life. Time wasn’t just tracked. It was seen.

Calendars, in particular, held pride of place in most homes. In my childhood, we used to have a Dunlop (or Continental, not sure) Tyres calendar hung in our living room. I can still recall the calendar of a particular year that had images of F1 cars in various tracks across the globe. I also recall we had a calendar from Carborundum Universal which had various dance forms from India represented by illustrious danseuses. These gave the living room a sense of sophistication and was a page-turner for the guests who came. These weren’t picked for function alone—they also made an aspirational statement.

But the ‘real’ calendar that served many purposes was the Mathrubhumi Malayalam calendar. It was/is a must in every Malayalee household. This one wasn’t for show. It was used. The squares were filled with information: tithis, muhurtams, eclipses, festival dates, moon phases, etc. It also doubled as a household planner—marked with notes about maid leave, milk delivery, or other reminders, scribbled with a pencil. It wasn’t uncommon to refer to the calendar as a source of truth—religious, practical, and domestic.

But over the years, this slow, physical experience of time has quietly disappeared. Calendars no longer occupy the walls of our homes. As technology and lifestyles evolved, the walls changed too. The Dunlop calendars gave way to photo frames or wall arts, or now-a-days to the more trendy…wall beadings. Even the mandatory Mathrubhumi calendar is not spared. From a place most convenient, it is shunned out of sight - behind bedroom or kitchen doors or cupboards; and in some cases, like mine, completely out of homes.

The change is not just about where the calendar went—it’s about how our relationship with time has shifted. Earlier, time was visible and continuous. You could look at a wall calendar and see the full month at a glance. You knew what had passed, what was coming. There was a sense of space and rhythm.

Now, we experience time in fragments. It either lies in the bottom or top corners of our computers or in the idle screens of our mobiles. Our phones ping us with reminders. Calendars are synced, not seen. Events are hidden behind layers of swipes. We don’t see time anymore—we wait for it to tap us on the shoulder.

This shift has made us more efficient, no doubt. But it has also made us more reactive. We no longer live with time—we live around it, always responding, rarely anticipating.

The old calendar didn’t ask for attention. And perhaps that’s what made it special. It didn’t organise your time—it quietly reminded you that time was passing. Maybe, the disappearance of the wall calendar reflects a larger truth that in making time more manageable, we may have made it less meaningful.

We now experience time as alerts, not atmosphere.

#life #observations #thingswedontnotice

In Praise of Conformity

2025-06-24T09:13:00.002+05:30

Last week at the Cannes Lions Festival, the best minds in advertising gathered once again to celebrate creativity. Awards were handed out for what was different, daring, disruptive, and of course, “never-seen-before.” Funnily, for a festival that champions difference, the crowd looked remarkably…similar. Black or white t-shirts, jeans or linen trousers, sneakers, and perhaps a blue or black linen blazer to complete the uniform.

The same happens at weddings—no matter how much we desire to stand out in the event, our hand automatically reaches for a kurta or a saree, even if it hasn’t seen the light of day in years. Why, have you ever noticed that at office parties, someone will eventually play “Summer of '69,” and as if it’s encoded, everyone in office joins the chorus of singing it together.

There is something oddly comforting in sameness. Not just in rituals, but in behaviours, gestures, even aspirations. For a society that prides itself on diversity, we seem to hold a deep and enduring affection for conformity.

However, everybody—brands included—loves terms like innovator, path‑breaking, disruptor. The Apple “Think Different” campaign is like a manifesto for those of us who pride ourselves on standing out. In ad agencies, we celebrate the rare few campaigns that genuinely break the mould. Yet here’s the paradox: less than 1% of our work is truly different.

So, is conforming really so bad?

We survived as a species because we conformed. We mimicked, copied, and obeyed—because standing out in a jungle full of predators was a poor survival strategy. The early human who followed the group was more likely to live, to mate, to pass on genes. Safety lay in the herd. Evolution, perhaps, was not partial to the originals.

As civilisation progressed, conformity gave birth to culture. Festivals, rituals, language, even etiquette are all codified expressions of conformity. Imagine how would a Holi or Diwali be, if every third household celebrated it differently?

Our economic systems too are powered by sameness. Mass production is possible only because we accept standardisation—of design, of taste, of experience. The car we drive, the parts it uses, the thali meal, the multiplex movie, the 9-to-5 job—they exist because we agreed, en masse, to want the same thing at the same time.

Let’s be honest, even in marketing, “being different” is a brand strategy, not a truth. The archetype of the misfit is now mass-produced. Agencies sell “disruption” with 50-slide decks and pre-approved mood boards.

We claim to reject the ordinary, yet test for ad effectiveness using the same age-old metrics. We create personas to personalise, but really, we’re finding better ways to group people who behave similarly. We say, “Talk to an individual,” but then buy media based on shared behavioural cohorts. Irony died a long time ago.

Sure, Gladwell told us about “tipping points”, “outliers”, and “mavens”, where a few are enough to sway the many . But those signals rely on the soil of conformity to spread. If I were to paraphrase the Bard, the world of change is a stage—and most of us are stage hands, not the stars.

And in the world of branding, the fetish for disruption sometimes forgets that before a brand can break the rules, it must first be recognised within them. You can’t be a misfit unless people know what you’re misfitting from.

In a world that’s shifting faster than we can process, conformity is the emotional anchor. When everything else is unstable—jobs, weather, algorithms, rent—it is conformity that gives comfort. That familiar plate of dal-chawal, the same good morning message from that Uncle on WhatsApp, the guaranteed curd rice to end a meal in South Indian homes —these are not minor rituals. They are survival cues.

Conformity gives meaning to the everyday. It allows us to function, to connect, to not have to rethink every small decision. If every act had to be “different,” life would be exhausting. Uniformity, ironically, is what gives us the energy to be original in bursts.

As marketers, the temptation is always to stand apart. But survival—and scale—often lies in standing together. Conformity is not the enemy of creativity. It is the canvas.

We may admire the misfits. But it is the ones who understand the script—and choose how to play within it—who build enduring brands, enduring stories, and perhaps even enduring societies.

In the age of disruption, maybe the quietest form of boldness is this —to not try so hard to be different.

Father’s Day and The Romance of Sacrifice

2025-06-18T09:13:00.003+05:30

Like every Father’s Day, this one too saw the social media floodgates open. A wave of sepia-toned memories and black and white stoic portraits of fathers who walked barefoot so we could wear branded shoes, who skipped meals so we could eat out, who didn’t buy new clothes so that we could, who served a small helping of his favourite dessert to himself so we could get an extra serving, who quietly shouldered burdens, who defined love as responsibility and care as invisibility, and who gave up dreams so we could chase ours.

I’m not writing to question the truth of these stories. I’m sure it all is true. However, what caught my attention is that the subtext is unmistakable: the nobility of a man lies in how much he gave up.

What makes me curious is: why do we keep telling this story in the same way? Why are we so compelled to romanticise sacrifice?

Perhaps it begins with how we've historically understood love in Indian families. Unlike the West, where love is often expressed through words and physical affection, here, love hides in action—and often, in absence. The father's love has long been the background score—never loud, but always playing. He doesn’t say “I love you,” he silently pays your coaching class fee. He doesn’t hug, he hands over the keys to a second-hand scooter once you completed your board exams.

Till the late 80’s and early 90’s, India was a country coming to terms with intergenerational poverty and scarcity, sacrifice became the only acceptable form of ambition. If you were poor, you survived; if you were middle-class, you sacrificed. To be a "good father" was to become invisible—to blend into the background like ceiling fans and dusty almirahs: present, but uncelebrated.

However, today, the strange thing is that the generation that romanticises their father’s sacrifice is often the same one that resents the idea of giving up their own dreams. We would choose a holiday to a new destination over visiting our hometown. We’d take the job offer that requires relocation over staying put for the kids. We repost quotes about our fathers taking a bus to work, but want to change our cars that are just four years old and have clocked under 30,000 km.

We celebrate fathers for being self-effacing, while actively seeking therapy to avoid becoming like them. The disconnect isn’t hypocrisy—it’s evolution.

But the guilt still lingers, and perhaps that’s why we keep returning to this familiar script. To say, “I see you, Papa,” is also to say, “I know I’m doing it differently.”

Sacrifice, after all, is clean. It’s easy to share. It fits neatly into a caption. It doesn’t require us to untangle messy truths—about how some sacrifices were necessary, but others came from a system that refused to let men express themselves in any way other than by giving up what they wanted.

What we rarely ask is this: Did they want to sacrifice? Were they given a choice? Would they have preferred joy over martyrdom, if society had allowed it?

As offsprings of the Great Indian Middle Class, the stories of our fathers—their simple lifestyles, and the sacrifices they made—all sit well in the story arc of a hero overcoming all odds. From mythological tales to Bollywood scripts, the ideal father is one who folds his desires into a neat bundle and places them beneath the needs of his children. He is not to be celebrated for who he is, but for what he has given up. Love was measured by what was surrendered. The more he gave up, the more he seemed worthy of celebration.

We’ve built entire altars around the idea of sacrifice—as though love isn’t real unless it comes at a cost.

Perhaps the greatest irony is this: as a generation that grew up on their fathers’ sacrifices, we are now busy writing LinkedIn posts about work-life balance, and updating our Facebook and Instagram with pictures of the excesses we indulge in.

The old father lived in a time of scarcity, and the only option was this or that. The modern father lives in a time of plenty, and we choose this and that.

And we call it progress.

Or perhaps… is it just repackaged guilt?

Rebranding of success, of status, of self-worth

2025-06-13T10:38:00.004+05:30

There was a time when the markers of success were defined by what you chose to own. The car you drove, the house you lived in, the watch on your wrist, the phone in your pocket, the fashion or perfume you wore —success was a visible, quantifiable thing. It was a flaunt you carried it out-of-home, on you in person, and inside, in your living rooms.

Today, that calculus seems to be quietly changing. Increasingly, success is not about what you choose, but what you choose not to. To not hustle constantly. To not work on weekends. To not need a corner office. To not flaunt your wealth, but to use it for something “meaningful.” In short, to have the privilege of saying “no.”

This isn’t just a shift in consumption or consumer behaviour. It is a recalibration of aspiration itself.

Earlier, arrival was about accumulation. More was more. Today, it’s about subtraction. Consider the appeal of minimalism—not as an aesthetic, but as a status statement. Owning fewer things but better things. Wearing a plain white linen shirt that costs more than a sequinned logo tee. Refusing to chase every trend, but choosing timeless over timely.

Even in conversations, there’s a new vocabulary of restraint: “I don’t check emails after 7 PM.” “I took 2 weeks off for a Vipassana retreat.” “I’ve stopped ordering food from places that use single-use plastic.” The subtext is clear—not everyone can afford to say no. But if you can, it signals that you've made it.

It’s not that materialism as social currency has vanished. It has simply shape-shifted. A business class ticket is no longer about the seat, but about the experience of being cared for. Eating at an obscure, chef-curated kitchen in Dharamkot becomes a talking point, not for its exclusivity, but for the narrative it offers. Success now prefers to be storied rather than shown.

The old trophies—houses, cars, clubs—still exist. But the new-age medal is a photograph with a Maasai elder or a selfie at a Maha Kumbh Mela. It’s not what you bought; it’s what you felt. What you gave back. How authentic you were.

Another striking shift is how success is increasingly judged not by possession but by participation. Start-up founders are lionised not just for exits, but for contributing to the ecosystem—through mentorship, angel investments, or by just “being there” on panels. Alums of prestigious institutions now talk more about giving back to their alma mater than about topping the placement charts.

There’s a performative generosity at play here too, but it’s not necessarily a bad thing. For a country once obsessed with personal advancement, the idea that success could involve the collective is, in many ways, progress.

The social optics in the theatre of aspiration has changed. Earlier, success came with the background score of swelling violins. Today, it comes in the soft key of self-effacement.

We post photos not of luxury brands, but of artisanal looms. We don’t just run marathons—we do it for a cause. Our coffee must be single-origin, our success—multi-layered.

This isn’t hypocrisy; it’s evolution. As the rich and powerful learn the grammar of subtlety, success is becoming quieter, cleverer, and in many ways, more inward-looking.

Perhaps the biggest change is this: Success no longer demands applause. It demands peace. The ability to walk away. To opt out. To ghost the race without needing to win it.

It is not that people are not actively seeking success. It is just that markers of success has rebranded itself. We’ve simply shifted the burden of success from the material to the moral, from things to thoughts. But the chase remains—just subtler, more socially acceptable. A different kind of conspicuous consumption. One that consumes less metal and more meaning.

AI as Gatekeepers

2025-06-09T09:54:00.000+05:30

Gatekeepers have been the most toughest hurdle to cross from time immemorial before one can reach out to the powers that maybe. Be it the Kotwal in the courts of the emperor or the king, or the celestial guards of the gods or meeting the modern day corporate czars.

I started my career in sales. My first job was going door to door and canvas for newspaper subscriptions. Well, that was the easy part of the job. The tougher part was Institutional Sales. It was a time when every institution worth its salt had its own hierarchy of barriers. To reach the boss, one had to first cross the darban, then the receptionist, then the chaprasi, and if you were lucky (and well-dressed), the secretary. These human gatekeepers didn’t just regulate access—they defined power. Gatekeeping was not just functional, it was theatrical. A ritual of deferral that reminded you where you stood.

Today, something eerily similar is happening—except the gatekeepers wear no uniforms, have no expressions, and sit not at desks, but in code. Artificial Intelligence has quietly slipped into the corridors of marketing and communication, assuming the role of the modern-day gatekeeper. And like all good gatekeepers, it controls both entry and exit—but with none of the drama.

Let’s start with the sender. A marketer today drafts an email to a client. Before it even reaches human eyes, AI has stepped in. It corrects grammar, flags tone, suggests simpler words, checks for spam triggers, and optimises the subject line to maximise open rates. What we send out is no longer purely us. It’s us—after machine approval.

Now shift to the receiver’s end. That same email is greeted not by the client’s curiosity, but by a machine’s suspicion. Algorithms evaluate whether the email should land in the inbox or the junk folder. AI filters assess whether it’s relevant, promotional, or potentially intrusive. What once was a direct line of communication is now a minefield of automated judgment.

The same holds true for social media. Posts are curated by algorithms, visibility dictated by engagement predictions, language analysed for sentiment. As communicators, we now perform for an audience of one—the AI gatekeeper—long before we perform for the actual audience.

In the old world, you knew who the gatekeeper was. You could smile at the receptionist, strike a conversation with the chaprasi, send a Diwali gift to the secretary. Access was transactional, yes, but it was also human.

Today, you don’t even know what stopped your message from getting through. The gatekeeper is invisible and un-bribeable. It has no ego to flatter and no tea breaks to exploit. And yet, it shapes your success of your message delivery.

Yes, AI makes us more efficient, but it also makes us less original. When AI suggests subject lines, corrects tone, and predicts virality, we all risk sounding the same—inoffensive, hyper-optimised, and devoid of texture. Just as bureaucracy once flattened the human spirit, AI may be flattening our voice—one autocorrect at a time.

Talking about bureaucracy, I strongly believe that AI can easily replace their work…at least a lot of their work. Let’s look at the commonalities of both:

Bureaucracy has rules, forms, protocols. So does AI. Bureaucracy evaluates, approves, rejects, escalates. So does AI. Bureaucracy hides behind opaque systems, doesn’t explain itself, and—most importantly—it doesn’t listen. So does AI :)

The only key difference is, earlier, bureaucracy stifled by slowing us down due to processes. AI speeds things up.

AI as a new kind of bureaucracy means, like I mentioned above, that it dulls creativity. We start crafting messages and making sure to pass through filters—linguistic, visual, emotional, then we all sound the same. But the most powerful communication is often the one that breaks form—not fits it. It surprises, it irritates, it sticks out like a sore thumb. The very things AI is designed to smoothen out.

In a world where every message passes through silent filters, maybe the new rebellion is not bypassing the gatekeeper—but reminding it that sometimes, a human knocking out of turn deserves to be let in.