in vacant or in pensive mood

I started my career in advertising with Bru Coffee. I was the junior account executive on this account in at Ogilvy, Mumbai. Needless to say, this was a huge opportunity, the magnitude of which I understoon only a few years later. For context, I am from a Puducherry - a charming small town in South India. So naturally,  a move from here to Mumbai is a BIIIIG jump. But that was still smaller compared to my professional leap. I was handling a Unilever account - a client few within the agency get the privilege of working on. The cherry on this surprise cake? I was working at Ogilvy - the mecca of modern advertising. A culture shaper in the Indian advertising scene. I had entered this behemoth without prior advertising experience, working on a client many aspired to handle, in a city many struggled to get to. And all of this was handed to me on a platter - all I had to say was YES. All of this would have been much harder if not for the account I was working on. Bru Coffee is a Sout...

The 2026 T20 World Cup has introduced something new - four official phases to a 20-over match: Launch. Consolidate. Accelerate. Finish. As a strategist, I found interesting yet funny, I have 3 observations to make.  Firstly - I get it. What started 20 years ago needs something new, fresh to keep audiences glued. It needs better 'marketing'. It needs a je-ne-sais-quoi that could attract viewership. It needs new news. And the 4 phases are just that. A rebrand of sorts.  It's complete marketification of the game. Introducing boardroom lingo into homes and regular conversations.  It's definitely different from regular 50-over matches. Power-plays can't be called just power-play anymore. Everything needs to be shorter, more intense, more adrenaline-fuelled. If you notice the words - they are practically synonyms. Apart from consolidate phase - which in my personal opinion is an aberration - all words practically talk about speed. Consolidate sounds more a marketingstrate...

I had this strange sensation a couple of days ago while I was meditating in the Ashram at Pondicherry. I was, in my head, imploding myself to lifelessness and trying to feel a sense of oneness with the Higher force.  I have been doing this many times, along with the opposite experiment of expanding myself into a universal largeness to feel small and again, connect with a higher force/being. Now, although I have been doing both of these, I had a strange feeling this time because as I was trying to come back to consciousness and into myself - I had lost all sense of my body in my head. I actually felt that I was nothing. I couldn't feel my physical presence, my body, my arms, legs, the fact that I was sitting Japanese style, the ground - nothing.  The feeling was wonderful and immensely moving almost a spiritual epiphany of sorts. Although there definitely is some solid scientific reasoning of this sudden senselessness - what I was feeling then was nothing short of a momentary s...