CRUNCH - All things crunched.

Time has this uncanny ability to fade everything that it touches and it subsequently reinvents some thing new that is fade-able. Ours, is defined as a time and age that is psychological in nature and not institutional. Which essentially means that individuals now have to perform the role of society for themselves...what used to be done for us by institutional structures like family, caste, society, culture through ritual process, we now have to do inside ourselves for ourselves. This makes us a culture of the individual rather than the collective. If every generation was given a megaphone to shout out their differentiated approach, it is likely that the POV of the current generation is bench-marked against some that was older.         What is interesting to note is that the fundamental institutions have changed from family/birth structures to social structures... Google is the new god and facebok is the new society. Ours is in many ways still a deeply ritualistic c...

What  is the world of luxury, premium, couture…how do they create and stir so much emptiness and instill a feeling of hollow even in the souls of those with wealth and status.  Luxury operates by creating a deep sense of lack and void. It creates a profound sense of desire and longing– it creates a need that did not not exist. So how does one create desire and whom should we target.       They key to aspirational brands are that they are elusive – they play hard to get. No one can own them. They only allow membership not ownership. These brands are build on momentum and they flourish through the innovations that they come up with. Fashion, luxury and everything that is status conferring is also satus depleting, hence we feel the need to keep spending to stay with these brands and categories. At a broader level every faction of society has the same aspirations, some realize it momentarily and others can enjoy it over a longer passage of time. Luxury is a g...

Loads have been lauded on the Indian cricket team for conquering the world. To the many Indians, this has been a customary display of Indian nerves and fragility and the ultimate triumphing over emotions. A tied game with England, a heartbreak against SA, a gritty win to outclass the Aussies and the vindication of Pakistan...we watch cricket like we consume a bollywood flick and it is no surprise we demand the same codes of entertainment from a game like we do from a film. The songs, the poetry, the locales, the highlights and twilights, the cruises and the unexpected bends, the emergence of heroes and the conquering of villains and finally a happy ending. World Cup 2011 was just that or was it more...     Parallel to the roller coaster journey of this tournament is the hint of the evolution of the Indian player. The involvement of corporate India, the proximity of the entertainment industry and the high handedness of the political machinery has ensured that 'performance' i...

The Matrix has Hooked Us It was 1999 ... then it felt like connectedness and over the years, the enormity of the references in the Matrix has been revealed. It is a film of everything pathbending and has become the template of ambition (there is no bar to raise while working on the matrix - it is the bar).The movie took cyberfiction staples like those found in William Gibson ’s Sprawl trilogy — including his classic 1984 novel, Neuromancer , from which the internetworked concept of “the matrix” is taken — and mashed them together with anime, wire-fu , postmodernism, metaphysics, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland , Jean Baudrillard’s Simulacra and Simulations , and a torrent of other texts and contexts. The film also juggles religious (hinduism, buddhism, christianity )and philosophical premises Filmed mostly in Sydney, Australia, and anchored by a hacker named Neo and his battle-worn leader Morpheus , The Matrix follows a group of intrepid rebels as they rage against their machine o...

The many experi-mints conducted by crunch towards refresh the branding vs blanding debate in 2011 is turning into a rigorous relearning of prose and its elemental dna.    Questions like - what is at the innermost core of a story and what makes the nebula. at what point does the story start breathing and what is the point where its life begins to recede. if everything in the storyland is semantic and its interactions are semiotic, at what point does behavior collide with learning. To understand when to intervene - you must know what it is ... so what is it ... for crunch, the story is the creative reconstruction of context, personality and interaction. The real essence is in the deconstruction of cause. What causal linkages could lead to interesting stories.    Why CAUSE rules for crunch ... lets examine the meanings       Story: the telling of a happening or connected series of happenings, whether true or fictitious; account; narration Narrativ...

the four shades of blue & the one color of thrill. between - ken block, parkour, skydives, bedwalks, river shoots, the bboy stunts, the many sails and extensively burnt rubber from the drags - thrill has been the royal box seat of experience.  life is yet again theatrical with a sense adventure