When I did a podcast with Karthik Nagarajan of The Filter Koffee Podcast.
The Making of a Surprise Viral
When Bharathan’s Kathodu Kathoram was released in 1985, I was in high school. It was a time of movies with great stories and music. A time when directors, script writers, music directors, and even lyricists were all considered superstars. In discussions in school and college campuses, it was not just the actors that got attention,…
Peak Greenwashing: What Green NFTs are all about
(First published in Economic Times Brand Equity) Recently a former colleague and a popular podcast host asked me in a conversation that how much of what we do are really impactful and how much of that is playing to the gallery. And my response to that was most of the things done in the pretext…
‘Age of Information and Age of Choices’
A few days back, in an attempt to reduce the number of times I reach out to the mobile phone involuntarily, I set up a timer for the screen time of WhatsApp. For now, it is working. Most of us have enough anecdotal stories of our attempts to reduce the infinite scrolling and browsing, with…
Of Rabbit Holes and ‘Forked’ Rabbit Holes
Getting lost in a rabbit hole is easier these days. We get introduced to a new concept or subject. And if there is a desire to get to know more about it, there are enough pathways, thanks to the internet. From tweets to short reads, long reads, videos, podcasts, and books itself, it’s all out…
Existence – Efficient, Effective, Templatised!
This is triggered by @manuscrypt’s interesting piece on Efficient Existence. ‘Quantified self’ was one of the jargons (that went mainstream later) in marketing in the late 2000s, ever since Nike’s running shoes became apparently intelligent. (Apparently Intelligent can also be called AI.) Since then wearables became a common term and measuring every aspect of existence…
A Death, Cats and Washing Machines, and a Way of Seeing the World
I have never been a religious person, barring the first 15 years or so, though I grew up in a deeply religious and ritualistic family. Since high school, I have moved in the spectrum of agnosticism to atheism, finally settling for the latter. No compulsions or pressures from home also helped my cause. During my…
This Time, It’s For Real!
(Originally published in Economic Times Brand Equity, December 2020) This is that time of the year, when many of us like me are under pressure to be ‘thought leaders’, predict and write about trends for the coming year. And we all attempt it in all earnestness. But truth be told, most of these are hollow…
Religion, State, and Personal Choices
Debates are now raging over a new controversial law that allows the State to interfere in a deeply individual choice like marriage (notwithstanding that in India, it is not such a deeply personal choice). It doesn’t require much intelligence to see this as unconstitutional and State trying to exert power over individual liberties and freedom….
Of Being Hunters And The Hunted
Science, especially with the understanding in evolutionary biology and neurosciences tell us that as a species we have evolved over millions of years and our brains have evolved over time. And our actions are controlled by reactions/changes in any of the three parts of the brain. Millions of years back, the primary purpose was to…