Month: January 2026

 

We’ve all been there—heart racing at the unknown, FOMO whispering, “What if you miss out?” Yet science whispers back: Curiosity isn’t just a cat-killer; it’s a fear-slayer. Neuroscientists like those at Stanford show curious brains release dopamine, turning dread into delight. When uncertainty looms, fear freezes us. Curiosity? It fuels exploration. But here’s what is reassuring: What if fearing the unknown is the real uncertainty—because curiosity guarantees discovery?

 

Pause. Recall your last “what if” moment. Did fear win, or did wonder?

 

Japan’s hikikomori—millions of reclusive youth hiding from life’s chaos. Enter curiosity pioneer Yuval Noah Harari‘s twist: These “withdrawers” sparked ikigai micro-movements, blending isolation with quirky experiments like urban foraging apps. From fear-fueled bunkers emerged global apps teaching resilient living. Flip achieved.

 

The Fear Tax & The Curiosity Dividend

Fear is a voracious tax on potential. It charges you in advance—with sleepless nights, paralysing over-analysis, and opportunities let slip. Its currency is FOMO, but a twisted version: the Fear Of Making Anything happen. Curiosity, however, pays a dividend. It invests a simple question: “What if this leads somewhere interesting?

 

The Museum of Failure in Sweden

 

Instead of fearing public ridicule, it’s creator, Dr. Samuel West, curated a spectacular collection of failed products (Colgate Lasagna, anyone?). By treating flops not with shame but with analytical curiosity, he created a wildly successful exhibit that teaches innovation. The failure became the feature.

 

Look at the dabbawalas of Mumbai. In the face of urban chaos and logistical uncertainty, their system isn’t built on rigid tech, but on adaptive curiosity—curiosity about shortcuts, human networks, and simple, fail-proof codes. An uncertainty (how to deliver 200,000 lunches flawlessly) met with curiosity created a Harvard-case-study-worthy model.

 

Introspection :When did you last pay a Fear Tax on a decision? What was the compound interest of worry you incurred?

 

The Antidote to FOMO: JOMO of the Journey

 

The crushing Fear Of Missing Out stems from a fixation on a single, idealized outcome. Curiosity liberates you by offering the Joy Of Missing Out(JOMO) on predictable, stale narratives. It invites you to miss out on anxiety in exchange for the thrill of discovery. When you are curious, you cannot be bored, and you cannot be victimised by the unknown. You are on a scavenger hunt of your own design.

 

The Fear Reflex (and Why It’s Overrated)

 

Fear narrows.
It shrinks timelines.
It pushes us toward familiarity, templates, best practices, consensus.

 

Fear is excellent for survival.It is terrible for transformation.

 

When Kodak saw digital photography, fear made them protect film.

 

When Nokia saw smartphones, fear made them protect hardware.

 

When Blockbuster saw streaming, fear made them protect stores.

 

None of these companies lacked intelligence.
They lacked curiosity under pressure.

 

Fear asks: What do I stand to lose?
Curiosity asks: What might be possible now that the rules are changing?

 

Only one of these questions has ever built the future. No prizes for guessing which one.

 

Curiosity: The Most Underrated Strategic Muscle

 

Curiosity expands time instead of compressing it.
It creates optionality where fear creates dead ends.

 

Look at Japan’s Shinkansen engineers. When faced with noise complaints from trains exiting tunnels at 300 kmph, they didn’t brute-force the problem. They studied kingfishers. The beak. The dive. The silence. Result: faster trains, less noise, lower energy use.

 

In India, consider how UPI emerged. The uncertainty wasn’t technological. It was behavioral. Would people trust digital money? Would merchants adapt? Instead of fearing adoption friction, the ecosystem leaned into curiosity. Lightweight apps. QR codes. Zero merchant fees. The result wasn’t just adoption. It was a cultural rewrite of money itself.

 

Curiosity doesn’t eliminate risk. It reframes it as tuition.

 

The Inner Shift; Missing The Wood For The Trees

 

Uncertainty doesn’t demand answers.
It demands posture.

 

Fear-based posture says: “Tell me what to do.”
Curiosity-based posture says: “Let me explore what’s unfolding.”

 

This is where leadership quietly diverges.

 

The most effective leaders today are not the ones with certainty.They are the ones comfortable holding questions longer than others.

 

They don’t rush to close the loop.
They widen it.

 

They understand that clarity is not the starting point.
It is the byproduct of engagement.

 

The Quiet Payoff

 

When you meet uncertainty with curiosity:

 

• You see patterns others miss
• You build anti-fragility, not just resilience
• You stop playing defense against the future
• You become interesting again, to yourself and to others

 

Most importantly, you stop outsourcing your sense of agency to circumstances.

 

The future doesn’t reward those who wait for certainty.
It rewards those who know how to dance with ambiguity without needing guarantees.

 

Uncertainty is not asking you to panic. It’s asking you to participate.

 

In Closing

 

The truth about uncertainty: It’s not a bug in the system. It’s the feature that keeps life from becoming a rerun.

 

So the next time you feel that familiar knot in your stomach when facing the unknown, pause. Take a breath. And ask yourself the most powerful question in the human arsenal:

 

“I wonder what happens next?”

 

That’s not just optimism. That’s strategy.

 

Caveat: This just might qualify to be a manifesto for all those tired of running someone else’s race.

 

Van Gogh sold exactly ONE painting during his lifetime. One. Singular. Uno.

 

Meanwhile, his contemporary, Adolf von Menzel, was swimming in commissions, critical acclaim, and royal patronage. Today? Most people need Google to remember Menzel’s name.

 

Talk about the universe’s wicked sense of humor.

 

Here’s What Actually Happens When You Compare

 

Your brain—magnificent organ that it is—wasn’t designed for the comparison casino. Evolution optimized us for small tribes, not scrolling through zillions of success stories before breakfast. Every comparison triggers your amygdala like a tiny fire alarm: “THREAT DETECTED. INADEQUACY IMMINENT.”

 

The result? You’re burning premium fuel (your attention, creativity, focus) on a rental car going nowhere.

 

The Friction of Fiction

 

That person you’re envying? They’re probably comparing themselves to someone else. It’s turtles all the way down. A recursive loop of manufactured inadequacy. A rabbit hole that goes only one way-south.

 

Here’s what makes it extra ridiculous: you’re comparing yourself to a person who doesn’t actually exist. You’re comparing yourself to your imagination of someone else’s experience. You’re essentially losing sleep over fan fiction you wrote about someone else’s life.

 

Wild, right?

 

What Winners Actually Do Instead

 

The people who break through? They’re not oblivious to others—they’re just religiously focused on their next move. Not their competitor’s last move. Not industry benchmarks. Not what “everyone is doing.”

 

Their energy flows here:

Iteration over imitation

Progress over perfection (or perception)

Their specific weird edge over generic excellence

Getting 1% better than yesterday’s version of themselves

 

Michael Jordan didn’t become Michael Jordan by trying to be Magic Johnson. He became Jordan by being unreasonably, almost obnoxiously committed to being better than yesterday’s Jordan.

 

The Rat Race Trap

 

We all do it. Colleague gets a fat promotion? You’re suddenly a loser in your own story. Neighbor’s kid aces IIT? Yours is “finding herself” via PUBG marathons. Classic trap.

 

Now scale it up: Elon Musk’s comparing his Mars dreams to your morning commute? Nah. Comparison ignores context, turning your unique grind into someone else’s highlight reel. Energy wasted: 100%.

 

The Mathematics of Misery 

Comparison is not just theft of joy. It’s bad math. You are attempting to solve an equation with incompatible variables.

You are comparing your preface to someone else’s Chapter 11.

 

Your raw, behind-the-scenes footage to their carefully edited trailer.

 

Your entire, complex emotional landscape to their single, curated postcard.

The result is always an error message dressed up as anxiety. You’re trying to measure the weight of your soul with a ruler designed for flat-pack furniture.

 

So, How Do We Ditch This?

 

Deploy the So What?, Let Them Shield.

“They’re more successful.” So what?, Let Them. Does it take the taste from your morning coffee?

“They have a more luxurious life.”So what?, Let Them. Does it make your genuine laughter less real?

This simple, irreverent phrase defangs the comparison beast. It reveals the hollow core of most of our measuring contests.

 

Run Your Own Race. On a Different Track

 

Stop running their race. Better yet, stop running altogether for a moment. Be a gardener.Your only question: Is my plot more fertile today than yesterday? Did I plant one seed of progress, weed out one thought of self-sabotage? Growth, when measured against your own past self, is a silent, potent victory no measurement tool can quantify.

 

Comparison is the sneakiest way to abandon yourself

 

Your energy is the capital of your one wild and precious life. Spending it on comparison is like powering a spaceship with a potato battery. It’s a tragic, comical misuse of resources.

Put down the measuring stick. Pick up your chisel.Your masterpiece, with all its “flaws” and unique textures, is waiting. And it owes absolutely nothing to the sculpture taking shape next door.

 

The moment you stop comparing is the moment you start creating work that stands out. Because everybody else is busy copying, comparing, and conforming. Your unfair advantage is being weird, specific, and unapologetically you.

 

Your energy is finite. Spend it building, not benchmarking.

 

Think:If comparison truly worked, why does it leave you tired instead of better?

 

Energy Economics Anyone?

 

Energy is not infinite. It is capital.

 

When you compare, you spend it on:

Envy audits

Self doubt rehearsals

Mental courtroom dramas where you prosecute yourself relentlessly

 

None of this compounds.

 

Meanwhile, creation compounds quietly.
Focus compounds invisibly.
Consistency compounds mercilessly.

 

Comparison has a terrible ROI. It consumes premium energy and delivers discounted outcomes.

 

Some Reframing?

 

Instead of comparison, try calibration. Compare less. Calibrate more.

 

Calibrate against:

Your own last season

Your energy levels, not someone else’s output

Your values, not visible rewards

Your pace, not public timelines

 

Calibration sharpens. Comparison blunts.

 

Parting Thoughts

 

Comparison feels productive because it is busy. But busy is not brave.

 

Brave is choosing your lane and staying in it long enough to see what you become when no one else is used as reference material.

 

Your life is not a spreadsheet. Stop benchmarking it.

 

The Plosive Power Principle

 

Linguistic research shows that “plosive” consonants (K, P, T, B, D, G) create what’s called “acoustic burst energy“—a sudden release of air that the brain processes as attention-worthy. The K sound specifically:

 

• Creates the strongest velar plosive (produced at the back of the mouth)
• Generates higher decibel spikes than softer consonants
• Triggers the auditory cortex 60% more actively than fricatives (S, F, V sounds)

 

Your brain processes the sound ‘K‘ 40 milliseconds faster than softer consonants. That’s why you remember ‘Kodak‘ but forget ‘Luminar.’ Welcome to the secret weapon hiding in plain sight—the K Factor.

 

Kodak. Coca-Cola. Kit Kat. Nike. Ikea. Tik Tok. Kellogg’s. Slack. Canva. Kindle. Kickstarter. Notice something? The world’s most unforgettable brands aren’t just well-marketed—they’re sonically engineered. And they all share one secret ingredient.

 

The K Factor

 

Some brands don’t enter your head. They arrive with a knock.

 

Say Kodak out loud. Notice how your mouth closes with authority. No trailing softness. No apology.

 

That snap at the end is not accidental. It is branding before branding knew it had a job.

 

Long before logos learned gradients and fonts learned to behave, brands were sounds. And some sounds, like certain people, simply commanded the room.

 

Welcome to the K Factor.

 

But Is It Just About The Letter ‘K’?

 

No. It’s not just the letter. It’s the sound. The hard ‘C’ in Coca-Cola, the ‘Q’ in Qantas, the ‘Ch’ in Kraft—they all play the same phonetic game. This is the K-Factor: a phonetic quality of crispness and impact.

 

Some Offbeat Examples: The K-Factor in Unsuspecting Places

 

K-pop: A global phenomenon branded by a genre name. The ‘K’ doesn’t just stand for Korean; it’s a stamp of cool, catchy, and contagious energy.

 

Wikipedia: The initial ‘W’ is soft, but the central ‘Ki’ provides the intellectual “click” of knowledge assembling.

 

Blinkist: The ‘K’ sound in the middle is the “click” of getting key insights. It’s speed and intelligence, captured in sound.

 

What Happens When You Remove The K-Factor?

 

Imagine Podac instead of Kodak. Soga-Sola instead of Coca-Cola. The magic evaporates. The names go limp. They lose their kinetic energy and global pronounceability. The K-Factor isn’t just an addition; it’s often the foundation.

 

The Science of Stickiness: Why Your Brain Loves the ‘K’

 

Cognitive Ease: Plosive consonants like ‘K’ are easier for the brain to process and recall. They create distinct “sound shapes.”

 

Cross-Cultural Currency: The ‘K’ sound exists and is easily articulated in nearly every major language. It’s a passport to global markets.

 

Emotional Resonance: It conveys confidence, clarity, and innovation. It can feel cutting-edge (Krypto) or reassuringly solid (Kirkland- brand from Costco).

 

More to Kare about:

 

KFC – the acronym itself weaponizes K

Calvin Klein – luxury through consonants

Kleenex – became the generic term (K dominance)

Kawasaki – motorcycles that sound like power

Caterpillar – heavy machinery, heavy consonant

Converse – classic footwear, classic K sound

Kardashians – built an empire on that surname

Kate Spade – sophisticated K energy

 

Different categories. Different eras. Different temperaments. One shared acoustic spine.

 

The K does not ask for attention. It claims recall.

 

Oscar (The Academy Awards Statuette)

 

Opens with a vowel but ends with that hard C/K sound that snaps shut like a vault

 

The “-ar” ending creates the K-sound phonetically (Os-KAR)

 

Two syllables, punchy, impossible to mispronounce

 

The hard C creates finality—this is THE award, not an award

 

Some Research Insights

 

The “K is Kinetic” Hypothesis

 

Marketing research from Duke University (2015) found that brands using K/hard C in their names were perceived as 27% more “dynamic” and “energetic” than brands with softer consonants, even when product categories were identical.

 

The Trademark Advantage

 

Legal analysis shows that intentional K-replacement spellings (Krispy vs. Crispy, Mortal Kombat vs. Combat) not only create distinctiveness for trademark purposes but also boost memorability by 19% because the “wrong” spelling creates cognitive friction—forcing the brain to pay attention.

 

The Global Consistency Factor

 

Unlike many phonemes that vary across languages, the K/hard C sound exists in 99.7% of world languages with minimal variation, making it the most “universal” branding sound available. This explains why:

 

• Korean brands use K aggressively (Kia, Korean Air, K-pop)
• Japanese brands leverage K despite different writing systems (Kawasaki, Kikkoman, Kubota)
• European brands cross linguistic barriers (Ikea, Koenigsegg, Kiehl’s)

 

The Digital Age Amplification

 

Social media research (2019-2023) reveals that hashtags with K/hard C sounds get 34% more engagement than those without, possibly because:

 

They’re easier to pronounce aloud (crucial for TikTok/Reels)

 

They create better rhythm in spoken content

 

They “sound” more clickable (the K mimics the click action)

The SOHB Insight: Sound Is Emotional Infrastructure

 

At SOHB(State Of The Heart Branding) Story, we don’t treat naming as decoration. We treat it as emotional architecture.

 

People don’t bond with brands cognitively first. They feel them.

 

Sound bypasses persuasion and goes straight to the nervous system. It decides before decks do.

 

The K Factor works not because it is trendy, but because it is truthful. It signals a brand that knows where it stands. A brand with posture. With presence. With a spine.

 

Not every brand needs a K. But every brand needs conviction.

 

Is the K-Factor a Rule or a Tool?

 

The greatest brands break rules to make new ones. Apple and Amazon don’t use a hard ‘K’ sound, yet they are monolithic. The K-Factor is not a mandate; it’s a powerful lever in your sonic branding toolkit. Use it when you need to cut, click, and connect.

 

For Brand Builders, Some Take Aways

 

1. Audit your brand name phonetically, not visually. Say it aloud. Fast. Slow. When irritated. When excited. Does it hold its ground?
2. Listen to how your brand sounds at the end. Do you close with certainty or trail into politeness?
3. When launching sub-brands or products, test for percussive consonants. They don’t have to be K. They just have to land.
4. If recall is your challenge, examine softness before spending on storytelling. You may be whispering into a noisy room.
5. Don’t add edge for effect. Add it for alignment. Sound must match the brand’s inner posture.

 

We have been led up the garden path on the idea of the written word. That it’s a reminder. A storage device. A handy, non-volatile memory stick for the species. This is not just wrong; it is a catastrophic understatement of the most potent technology ever to infiltrate the human skull.

 

The great literary berserker, Northrop Frye, didn’t just nibble around the edges of this truth. He detonated it: “the written word is far more powerful than simply a reminder: it re-creates the past in the present, and gives us, not the familiar remembered thing, but the glittering intensity of the summoned-up hallucination.“

 

Let that sink in. Glittering intensity. Summoned-up hallucination.

 

We’re not talking recall. We’re talking necromancy(the practice of claiming to communicate by magic with the dead to learn about the future).

 

The Eye Conquered The Ear( And Changed Everything)

 

Plato knew this. Two thousand years before Marshall McLuhan told us “the medium is the message,” the old Greek troublemaker understood that writing wasn’t just a tool—it was a perceptual revolution.

 

Before writing, language lived in the ear. Stories were sung, wisdom was chanted, truth was what you could remember and repeat. The oral world was intimate, immediate, vanishing. Like breath.

 

Then came the alphabet.

 

Suddenly, language moved from the evanescent ear to the eternal eye. Words became objects. Thoughts could be frozen, examined, dissected. This wasn’t progress—it was mutation.

 

Plato, that paranoid genius, feared this shift even as he used it. He worried that writing would atrophy memory, that students would mistake the symbol for the truth. So what did he do? He made them study geometry before philosophy.

 

Why geometry?

 

Because geometry trains the eye to see patterns, to extract meaning from visual abstraction. Plato was building new neural pathways. He was teaching his students how to process reality through vision instead of sound.

 

He was hacking their brains for the written age.

 

What happens to a civilization when it shifts from ear to eye? What do we lose? What do we become?

 

Back to Frye’s bombshell: writing creates hallucinations.

 

When you read “The sun was setting over the battlefield,” you don’t recall a sunset. You don’t remember a war. Your brain generates a sunset that never existed. It conjures smoke and blood and dying light that are purely spectral—vivid, immediate, and utterly false.

 

This is the dark magic of text: it occupies your consciousness with someone else’s ghost.

 

The best writers know this. They’re not transcribing reality—they’re implanting visions. Proust doesn’t describe a madeleine; he makes you taste it. Cormac McCarthy doesn’t write about violence; he makes you flinch.

 

The written word doesn’t preserve experience—it manufactures it.

 

And the sucker punch is: this manufactured experience can be more real, more intense, more transformative than the original event. The “glittering intensity” Frye talks about? That’s the paradox. The copy exceeds the original. The map becomes more vivid than the territory.

 

The Medium Isn’t The Message, It’s The Metaphor( And The Metaphor Is A Drug)

 

Marshall McLuhan got the bumper sticker: “The medium is the message.” But Frye gives us the intravenous drip: “The Medium Is the Metaphor.”

 

The written word isn’t a taxi delivering a passenger (the “content”). It is the landscape. It defines the journey. When you read “forest,” you don’t just remember a tree. Your mind, trained by centuries of this geometric, visual sorcery, conjures one. Your personal forest. With your shadows, your scent of pine, your hidden path.

 

The book is a script for a séance. The author is a distant ghost, whispering instructions. You, the reader, supply the haunted house, the sounds, the faces, the terror, the joy. The hallucination is a collaboration.

 

Memory softens edges. Writing sharpens them.

When words are written, they stop being carriers of information and start behaving like portals. You don’t recall the event. You enter it. You don’t remember the feeling. You experience its after burn.

This is why a letter hits harder than a voice note.
Why a manifesto outlives a speech.
Why contracts change civilizations and poems outlive kings.

The medium is not neutral.
The medium becomes the metaphor.

Writing turns time into a flat surface. Past, present, and future collapse into a single optical field. The eye doesn’t just read. It reconstructs. Line by line, neuron by neuron, hallucination by hallucination.

You are not consuming meaning.
You are co-creating it.

 

This is why a film adaptation at most times disappoints. It replaces your glittering, personal hallucination—yours alone, summoned from the unique chaos of your experience—with a director’s singular, concrete one. It’s a violation.

 

Why Writing Still Scares Power

Spoken words disappear. Written words linger. And lingering is a threat.

Empires fear archives.
Tyrants fear diaries.
Brands fear screenshots.

Because once words are written, they become independent agents. They travel without permission. They outlive their authors. They refuse to be unsaid.

A written sentence is a slow-burning fuse. You never know when it will ignite. Or who it will set on fire.

This is why manifestos matter. Why constitutions matter. Why brand stories matter.

Not because they inform. But because they form.

 

The Visceral Voltage Of Text

 

Great writing hurts. Period.

 

Not emotionally (though it does that too). Physically. When you read something that’s truly alive, your body responds. Heart rate changes. Pupils dilate. Stress hormones spike.

 

Because your brain can’t distinguish between a real threat and a vividly written one. Between an actual experience and a “summoned-up hallucination.”

 

This is the writer’s superpower: the ability to hack the nervous system through nothing but symbols on a page.

 

Joan Didion makes you nauseous. David Foster Wallace makes you exhausted. Toni Morrison makes you bleed.

 

They’re not writing about experiences—they’re inducing them.

 

Words aren’t just communication. They are transfusion. When done right, they inject foreign consciousness directly into your bloodstream.

 

 

Why This Matters Now More Than Ever

 

We’re in another perceptual revolution. The shift from text to image, from reading to scrolling, from depth to velocity.

 

TikTok isn’t the enemy. Neither is Instagram. They’re just the next mutation. The next way that medium shapes consciousness.

 

But here’s the rebellion: understanding the power of the written word in an image-saturated age is subversive. Wielding it with precision? That’s magic.

 

While everyone’s optimizing for the algorithm, you can be optimizing for the nervous system. While others chase eyeballs, you can be chasing minds.

 

Because Frye’s “glittering intensity” doesn’t come from production value or viral tricks. It comes from precision of language. From knowing that the right word, in the right order, can summon hallucinations that outlast empires.

 

Parting Thoughts

 

Writing is not a mirror held up to reality.
It is a lever inserted into it.

Once words are written, they stop belonging to the moment that birthed them and start shaping moments they were never meant to see. They outlive authority. They outthink intention. They out wait power.

Spoken words ask to be heard.
Written words insist on being reckoned with.

So if you are writing merely to record, you are playing with matches and calling it filing. Writing is not administration. It is architecture. It doesn’t remember the world. It quietly rebuilds it, sentence by sentence, reader by reader, hallucination by hallucination.

Choose your words the way engineers choose load-bearing columns. The structure will stand long after you’ve left the room.

 

 

Apple doesn’t have customers. CrossFit doesn’t have members. Starbucks doesn’t have coffee drinkers. They have believers. And belief doesn’t happen by accident—it’s ritualized.

 

You stood in line for 30 minutes. For coffee. Coffee you could’ve made at home in 3 minutes. And you weren’t even mad about it.

 

Why do people queue overnight for a phone they’ve already seen online? Brands die from indifference; cults thrive on ritual. Ready to convert browsers into believers?

 

Brands don’t win loyalty. They perform it. Daily. Religiously. And the ones that endure are not brands at all. They are belief systems.

 

This is exactly what we are setting out to understand in this edition of SOHB(State Of The Heart Branding) Story👇.

 

It’s not about frequency. It’s about sacredness. What do a sneakerhead, a software developer, and a skincare enthusiast have in common? Their rituals tell us everything.

 

People don’t buy your product; they buy the person they become while using it. Rituals cement that identity.

 

Why does opening certain packaging feel like a ceremony, not consumption?

 

The highest form of brand loyalty isn’t repeat purchase; it’s personal ritual. Your goal is to become a meaningful part of someone’s story. Rituals transform mundane actions into meaningful moments. Your brand’s role is to provide the stage, the symbols, and the shared language for those moments.

 

The Ritual Rule Of Thumb: Make it personal—customers crave ceremonies that feel like secrets whispered just for them. The secret isn’t in what the ritual is—it’s in what it replaces.

 

Stating the obvious here: Your brand isn’t what you sell. It’s the ritual your customers can’t imagine their life without.

 

So, stop asking ‘What do we sell?’ Start asking ‘What do we help them become?‘—then build the ritual that gets them there.

 

Every ritual answers one silent human craving:“Tell me who I am when I’m with you.”

 

The encouraging part is that you don’t need a billion-dollar budget to build a ritual. You need to understand what moment in your customer’s day deserves to be sacred.

 

Rituals are emotional shortcuts.They bypass logic and plug directly into identity.The strongest brands reduce choice, not expand it. Rituals feel comforting because they remove anxiety.

 

Know more about what Apple, Starbucks, IKEA etc ritualise in the SOHB(State Of The Heart Branding) Story edition 👆. You will understand why the strongest brands behave less like businesses and more like religions.

 

Want cult-like brand loyalty? Stop thinking like a marketer. Start thinking like a ritual designer.

 

So, what ritual is your brand secretly training people to perform?

 

We’ve all felt it in our chest—that tight, uncomfortable squeeze when a brand whispers that you’re not doing enough, being enough, or caring enough. That’s not anxiety. That’s guilt. And it’s been selling to us our entire life.

 

It is widely acknowledged that the most successful salespeople never knock on your door. They knock on your conscience. While marketers obsess over desire and aspiration, guilt has been quietly closing deals in the shadows—and it might be the most powerful motivator we refuse to talk about.

 

What if the most effective marketing campaign in history isn’t for a shoe, a smartphone, or a soda—but for an emotion? For centuries, brands have mastered the art of selling guilt. It’s time we read the fine print on our own feelings.

 

Before I get ahead, let me share that guilt doesn’t work the way most emotions do in marketing. While fear pushes and desire pulls, guilt does something far more sophisticated. We’ll come back to this peculiar mechanism in a moment, but first let’s take an innocent look at what this edition of SOHB(State Of The Heart Branding) Story has to offer:Guilt.

 

 

It’s not in the brochure. It’s not in the sales script. But it’s on the invoice, written between every line: a silent surcharge of guilt. Welcome to branding’s most powerful, and least ethical, open secret.

 

Psychologists discovered something unsettling in the 1960s—something that explains why charity campaigns with starving children outperform those with success stories. The finding was so controversial, many marketers still won’t use it. But the data doesn’t lie.

 

The finding? We’re more motivated to avoid being a bad person than to become a good one. Guilt targets the gap between who we are and who we think we should be—and that gap is a chasm of consumer action.

 

Guilt sells what aspiration can’t: immediate moral restoration. Guilt doesn’t pitch. It lingers. And then it converts.

 

What if guilt is not a flaw in human psychology, but a feature brands actively design for?

 

Ever feel a strange pang after a purchase? That’s not coincidence. It’s strategy. In this edition of SOHB(State Of The Heart Branding) Story , we dissect how guilt became branding’s under-rated salesman—and how to build a heart-centric brand that never uses it.

 

Guilt is the invisible ink in the contract of modern consumption. Under the bright lights of desire, the terms seem clear. It’s only later, in the quiet, that the real message bleeds through.

 

The most dangerous form of branded guilt isn’t loud or accusatory. It whispers. And its favorite disguise is…empathy.

 

Guilt isn’t manipulation—it’s human connection that turns browsers into believers.Pair guilt with grace, and watch your brand build empires on empathy, not tricks. True brands don’t push; they pull with the power of “what if I miss out on me?

 

Guilt-driven marketing works because it respects intelligence. It doesn’t manipulate desire—it illuminates responsibility. The question isn’t whether to use guilt, but whether you’re willing to acknowledge the debts your audience already feels.

 

Maybe we’ve been getting it wrong. Maybe guilt isn’t the villain in our brand story—it’s the catalyst. It’s not about making people feel bad. It’s about making people feel responsible. And responsibility, unlike shame, builds movements.

 

Where have you felt the subtle hand of “guilt marketing”? Was it in sustainability, parenting, wellness, or luxury? Let’s discuss the alternatives. Join the conversation on this blog.

 

What’s in a brand name? Especially when its bullshit?

 

Let’s begin with a grenade, gently lobbed by the immortal George Bernard Shaw: “The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.”

 

Please hold that thought. In fact, I encourage you to let it simmer. Because nowhere is this illusion more artfully constructed, more blatantly weaponized, or more tragically hilarious than in the hallowed, often hollow, act of naming a brand.

 

We are storytelling animals. We see a name, and our brains, desperate for pattern, for meaning, instantly begin weaving a narrative. A brand name is not a label; it’s a promise, a personality, a prejudice—all packaged into a few syllables. It is the first contract, signed not in ink, but in perception.

 

But what happens when that contract is written in invisible ink? When the promise is puff, the personality a puppet, and the prejudice entirely unearned? Welcome to the glorious, gory world of Bullshit Brand Names.

 

The Shaw Bombshell: Names as Loaded Guns

 

George Bernard Shaw nailed it in 1912: “If you can’t get the right word for a thing, leave it unnamed.” Boom. Shaw wasn’t just a playwright; he was a branding prophet. Get the name wrong, and you’re not just unnamed—you’re unremembered. A killer name doesn’t describe; it evokes. It hijacks your lizard brain, plants a flag, and dares you to forget. But bullshit names? They promise the moon, deliver a mud pie, and leave you feeling played. Let’s dissect the carnage.

 

From Poetry to Puffery

 

A great name is a poem. It condenses a universe into a word. Think of Apple. Simple, universal, suggestive of knowledge (Newton), of simplicity, of a bite of something desirable. It wasn’t descriptive; it was evocative. It created a curiosity loop: “A computer named Apple? Interesting. Tell me more.

 

”A bullshit name, however, is a failed magic trick. You see the smoke, but the rabbit never appears. It tries to shortcut the story, to under-cut reality, to mislead with linguistic sleight of hand. It doesn’t open a loop; it slams a door labeled “Trust Here,” behind which is a broom closet.

 

Hall of Shame: Bullshit Names That Shortchanged the World

 

These flops didn’t just miss; they lied. They teased transcendence but peddled pedestrian. From the Swinging Sixties to your Insta feed, here’s the rap sheet—brands that undercut dreams with dictionary drivel or deceptive dazzle.

 

• McRib (McDonald’s, 1981): Sounds like a rib-rattling BBQ orgy, right? Nope—mystery meat molded into “rib” shape, reeking of processed regret. It flopped, revived as a cult zombie, but the name? Pure bait-and-switch, luring BBQ lovers into a soy-protein trap.
• KFC’s FCK Business (2018 global rebrand tease): Okay, not the full name, but their “FCK” bucket stunt post-chicken shortage? Genius troll or epic fail? It screamed rebellion but masked supply-chain fuckups. Shortchanged trust for shock value—classic misfire.
• Vitaminwater (Glacéau, 1996; Coke buyout 2007): “Vitamins + water = health elixir!” Bullshit. It’s sugar water with trace vitamins, outselling soda until lawsuits exposed the scam. Named like a miracle cure, it undercut real wellness while fattening Coke’s wallet.
• New Coke (1985): Coca-Cola’s “revolutionary” rename for a sweeter formula. Disaster—sales tanked 20%. It wasn’t new; it was a desperate pivot from Pepsi fear. Misled loyalists into thinking evolution, delivered betrayal.
• Indian Hall of Infamy: HDFC Bank’s ‘PayZapp’ (2014): “Pay” + “Zapp” = instant magic? Nah, clunky app riddled with glitches, buried under forgettable zing. Meanwhile, global peers like Paytm nailed simplicity.
• Back to the ’60s: Fabergé’s Brut (1964): “Brutal” aftershave for macho men? It sold pheromones in a bottle to dudes, but the name undercut sophistication—pure caveman bait in a disco era.

 

These aren’t accidents. Bullshit names mislead by overpromising (QuantumLeap = disruption? Try mediocrity), shortchange by underselling soul (PayZapp = utility? Yawn), and undercut by aping trends without earning them. Result? Billions flushed, trust torched.

 

The SOHHBM (State Of The Heart & Head Branding Mantra)

 

A bullshit name is a brand on borrowed time. In the age of radical transparency—where a consumer is three clicks away from your ingredient list, your factory conditions, or your founder’s questionable tweet—the gap between name and reality is a chasm that will swallow you whole.

 

Your brand name is not a mask. It is a mirror. It should reflect the true state of your brand’s heart—its core, its intent, its substance.If the name has to do the heavy lifting your product cannot, you are building on quicksand. If your story is all hook and no book, the audience will walk out.

 

The Anatomy of a Brand Name Lie

 

Can we start with a simple premise? Your brand name should not be a felony.

 

It shouldn’t mislead. It shouldn’t deceive. It shouldn’t make promises your product can’t keep, or invent virtues that exist only in the fever dreams of your marketing department.

 

And yet.

 

The corporate world is littered with names that do exactly that—brand names that function less like communication and more like elaborate cons, dressed up in focus groups and million-dollar logos.

 

Consider the McRib.

 

Here’s a product that contains no ribs. Zero. Not even the skeletal memory of a rib. It’s restructured pork shoulder—meat slurry, if we’re being honest—pressed into the vague shape of something that once lived near ribs. The name is a lie so audacious it loops back around to being almost admirable. Almost. McDonald’s built an entire mythology around this non-rib: limited-time scarcity, cult followings, farewell tours that rival Cher’s. But strip away the theatre, and you’re left with a question: if it’s not a rib, why call it one?

 

Because calling it the McPressedMeatPattyVaguelyShapedLikeRibs doesn’t have quite the same ring.

 

Then there’s Vitamin Water.

 

Ah, Vitamin Water. The poster child for nutritional gaslighting. A bottle that whispers “health” while shouting “sugar.” Created by Glacéau and later acquired by Coca-Cola for a staggering $4.1 billion, this beverage positioned itself as the thinking person’s hydration—water, but elevated. Vitamins! Electrolytes! Wellness in a bottle!

 

Except it contained as much sugar as a can of Coke. When sued for deceptive marketing, Coca-Cola’s lawyers argued—and I’m not making this up—that “no consumer could reasonably be misled into thinking Vitamin Water was a healthy beverage.”

 

Read that again. Their defense was essentially: “Only an idiot would believe our marketing.”

 

The judge disagreed. The case settled. The name remained. And millions of people continued buying sugar water, convinced they were making a healthy choice.

 

The Hall of Shame: A Global Tour of Nominal Nonsense

 

Let’s expand our taxonomy of lies, shall we?

 

KFC (1991-Present): The Great Fried Lie

 

Once upon a time, KFC stood for Kentucky Fried Chicken. Then, in 1991, they rebranded to just “KFC.” The official story? Modernization. Shorter, punchier, more contemporary.

 

The whispered truth? Growing health concerns about fried food. By abbreviating, they could distance themselves from the word “fried” while still serving the exact same product. It’s the corporate equivalent of changing your name on Tinder after a string of bad dates. Same person. Same baggage. New initials.

 

Häagen-Dazs (1961): The Scandinavian Scam

 

Nothing says “premium European ice cream” quite like… a completely made-up, gibberish Scandinavian-ish name created by two Jewish immigrants in the Bronx, New York.

 

Reuben and Rose Mattus invented the name Häagen-Dazs in 1961 to evoke Danish sophistication and Old World craftsmanship. There is no such word in Danish. Or Swedish. Or Norwegian. Or any human language. The umlaut? Pure decoration. It doesn’t even appear in Danish.

 

But it worked. Because sometimes, perception isn’t just reality—it’s more profitable than reality.

 

Lean Cuisine (1981): The Accidental Truth-Teller

 

Here’s a rare example of a name that’s technically honest while being spiritually dishonest. Yes, these frozen meals are “lean” in the sense that they’re low in calories. But they’re also lean in flavor, satisfaction, portion size, and any resemblance to actual cuisine.

 

The name promises French culinary elegance. The product delivers sadness in a plastic tray.

 

Pret A Manger (1983): Fake French, Real Profit

 

Founded in London by two college friends, “Pret A Manger” (Ready to Eat) sounds charmingly Parisian. The founder, Julian Metcalfe, later admitted they chose a French name simply because it sounded better than “Ready to Eat Sandwiches, Mate.”

 

Fair enough. But when your entire brand identity is built on an affectation—when you’re cosplaying as a French café while being as British as queuing and complaining about the weather—you’re trading authenticity for aesthetics.

 

Kingfisher (India, 2005-2012): The Airline That Flew Too Close to the Sun

 

Vijay Mallya’s Kingfisher Airlines promised luxury, glamour, and “fly the good times.” The name evoked elegance, the beer brand’s success, aspirational living.

 

The reality? Unpaid staff, grounded planes, and one of the most spectacular corporate collapses in Indian aviation history. The brand name became a punchline, a cautionary tale, a synonym for hubris.

 

Here’s the thing: you can’t name your way out of operational incompetence. You can’t brand your way past bankruptcy. Eventually, the product has to deliver on the promise—or the name becomes a monument to your failure.

 

The Ones Who Got It Right: When Names Deliver

 

Not all brand names are lies. Some are truth-tellers, promise-keepers, bridges between intention and reality.

 

Google (1998): Friendly, Curious, Infinite

 

Originally a misspelling of “googol” (10^100), the name perfectly captured the company’s mission: organizing infinite information. It’s playful, memorable, verb-able (“just Google it”), and doesn’t oversell or underwhelm. It promises nothing except scale and availability—and delivers both.

 

Apple (1976): Simple, Human, Revolutionary

 

In a world of International Business Machines and Digital Equipment Corporations, Steve Jobs named his company after a fruit. It was disarming, approachable, and utterly unforgettable. The name said: we’re not like them. We’re not intimidating. We’re for humans.

 

And they were.

 

Nirma (India, 1969): The People’s Detergent

 

Karsanbhai Patel named his low-cost detergent after his daughter, Nirupama. “Nirma” became synonymous with affordable cleanliness, democratizing hygiene for millions of Indian households. The name was personal, human, and carried the weight of genuine intention.

 

It wasn’t trying to be European. It wasn’t pretending to be premium. It was honest, accessible, and transformative.

 

Tata (India, 1868-Present): Legacy as Promise

 

Sometimes, a surname is the most powerful brand name of all. “Tata” carries 150+ years of trust, ethics, and nation-building. When you see that name on steel, software, or salt, you know what you’re getting: reliability, integrity, quality.

 

The name doesn’t make false promises because it doesn’t need to. It’s earned its reputation one product, one generation, one act of corporate responsibility at a time.

 

Amul (India, 1946): Cooperative Truth

 

“Amul” stands for Anand Milk Union Limited. It also means invaluable; in Sanskrit. But it means so much more: India’s white revolution, farmer empowerment, the taste of childhood. The brand never pretended to be anything other than what it was—a cooperative, by farmers, for farmers.

 

And that honesty made it iconic.

 

The Bullshit Spectrum: From White Lies to Corporate Fraud

 

Not all naming sins are created equal. Let’s map the territory:

 

Level 1: Harmless Exaggeration Example: Red Bull(“Gives you wings”).

 

We all know it’s hyperbole. Nobody’s suing because they can’t fly. It’s advertising, not aviation.

 

Level 2: Strategic Ambiguity Example: Subway (“Eat Fresh”) Fresh-ish. Fresh-adjacent. Fresh compared to what, exactly? The bread that’s been sitting there since last week?

 

Level 3: Deliberate Misdirection Example: Vitamin Water, Lean Cuisine Health-washing. Making junk food sound nutritious through clever nomenclature.

 

Level 4: Outright Deception Example: “Blueberry” cereals with no actual blueberries, “Maple” syrups with no maple This is where naming crosses from marketing into moral bankruptcy.

 

Level 5: Fraud Example: Theranos When the name promises revolutionary blood testing and the product is… not that. Not even close. Prison follows.

 

The Cost of Bullshit: What Happens When Brand Names Lie

 

Here’s what you lose when your brand name is a beautiful lie:

Trust (The Only Currency That Matters)

 

Once broken, trust is nearly impossible to rebuild. Ask Volkswagen about “Clean Diesel.” Ask Nestle about infant formula. Ask anyone who bought a “diamond” at Tiffany’s that turned out to be cubic zirconia.

 

When your name promises one thing and delivers another, customers don’t just leave—they become evangelists of your awfulness.

 

Talent

 

The best people don’t want to work for companies that lie. They want meaning, purpose, alignment between values and actions. A bullshit brand name is a red flag visible from orbit.

 

Long-Term Viability

You can fool some people for a while. You cannot fool all people forever. Eventually, reality catches up. The internet remembers. Whistleblowers speak. Journalists investigate.

 

And when they do, your clever name becomes an albatross.

 

The Way Forward: Principles for Honest Naming of Brands

 

So how do you name a brand with integrity? Here are some principles:

1. Promise Only What You Can Deliver

Your name is a contract. If you can’t keep the promise, don’t make it.

2. Embrace Your Truth

Sometimes the best names are the most honest ones. “Cheap Tickets” doesn’t pretend to be luxurious. “No Frills” grocery stores don’t oversell. Honesty can be a competitive advantage.

3. Let the Product Speak

A great product can carry a mediocre name. A terrible product will poison even the most beautiful name. Focus on substance over semantics.

4. Test for the “Grandma Rule”

If you’d be embarrassed to explain your brand name to your grandmother, it’s probably bullshit.

5. Remember: Brand Names Are Destiny

Whatever you call yourself, you’ll spend years living up to—or running from. Choose wisely.

 

The Takeaway: In Branding, As In Life, Truth Wins

George Bernard Shaw was right. Communication isn’t what you say—it’s what’s understood. And if what’s understood is that you’re full of shit, no amount of clever naming will save you.

 

The greatest brands in history— Apple, Google, Tata, Amul—succeeded not because they had perfect names, but because their names reflected genuine intentions, delivered on promises, and built trust over time.

 

The worst brands—the McRibs, the Vitamin Waters, the Kingfisher Airlines—failed not because their names were bad, but because their names were lies.

 

In the end, a rose by any other name would indeed smell as sweet.

 

But bullshit, my friends, smells like bullshit no matter what you call it.

 

And customers, eventually, always know the difference.

 

You can rename a product. You can refresh a logo. You can even reboot a category.

 

But the heart keeps score.

 

And the fastest way to lose it is to promise one thing and name another.

 

For all ( or a lot of) my Malayalee brethren, who prefer to call it humour sense, and not sense of humour, my apologies.

 

Humour is the only soft power that can punch above its weight.

 

It has toppled tyrants, sold soap, survived WhatsApp uncles, rescued awkward silences, and made hard truths slip past our ego’s security scanner wearing an outdated wig. Yet, in boardrooms, brand decks and “serious conversations,” humour is still treated like that naughty cousin you acknowledge only at weddings.

 

Big mistake. Because humour is not a garnish. It is the cutlery.

 

Why Your Funny Bone is Your Secret Superpower

 

Winston Churchill, three sheets to the wind, stares down Lady Astor’s barb—“Winston, if you were my husband, I’d poison your whiskey!”—and fires back: “Nancy, if I were your husband, I’d drink it.” Boom. Room erupts. Nazis quake. History pivots on a punchline. Jaw dropped yet? Good. Because humour isn’t just LOLs—it’s the cheat code for conquering chaos. But how? Stick around; we’re trying to decode it.

 

Science Validated Punchline

 

Neuroscientists at Stanford discovered that when humour clicks, your brain lights up like a pinball machine on steroids—activating reward centers, memory hubs, and problem-solving regions simultaneously. Translation? A good laugh doesn’t just feel good. It makes you smarter.

 

Victor Borge called humour “the shortest distance between two people.” I’d add: it’s also the fastest route between confusion and clarity.

 

Circle back in time—when Volkswagen wanted Germans to buckle up in the 1970s, stern safety campaigns flopped. Then they installed a piano keyboard on stairs next to an escalator. People chose stairs. Behaviour changed through play, not preaching. The insight? Humour doesn’t just communicate—it converts.

 

It Takes Two To Tango- Wit and Wisdom

 

Our favourite comedians aren’t just funny—they’re philosophers in disguise. George Carlin dismantled language. Ricky Gervais weaponized awkwardness. Closer home, Vir Das turns cultural contradictions into mirror moments.

 

What’s their secret sauce? They make the familiar strange and the strange familiar. That cognitive whiplash—that sudden shift in perspective—is where both laughter and learning live.

 

Think about it: Every great innovation is essentially a punchline to a problem nobody saw coming. The Post-it Note? A failed adhesive that became a billion-dollar “oops.” Airbnb? “What if we made sleeping in strangers’ homes…aspirational?” The setup is absurd. The punchline is genius.

 

The Irreverent Edge

Here’s where humour becomes strategic dynamite: It punctures pomposity. It cuts through corporate-speak faster than any slide deck. When Elon Musk launched a Tesla into space playing “Space Oddity,” he didn’t just market a car—he made science cool through sheer audacity and wit.

 

Or consider Amul’s ads—decades of turning news into butter-smooth satire. They’ve mastered the art of being topical without being preachy, cheeky without being cheap. That’s high-wire humour with a safety net made of insight.

 

But here’s the double-edged sword: Humour without wisdom is just noise. Wisdom without humour is just tedious. The sweet spot? When your joke lands and leaves a mark.

 

Humour isn’t the opposite of serious. It’s the lubricant of serious.

 

Worth Taking Note

 

Humour isn’t decoration; it’s disruption. It fires up the anterior cingulate cortex—the brain’s “detective” for incongruity—and floods the system with dopamine, the “Remember this!” chemical. A joke is a Trojan horse for wisdom. You let down the drawbridge for a laugh, and in marches a memory, an idea, a connection that sets up camp permanently. Fun, isn’t it?

 

The Art of the Strategic Giggle

Take IKEA. They sell self-assembly frustration in a flat pack. Their genius? Naming a bookshelf “BILLY” and a towel rack “TISKEN.” They weaponise Swedish humility and our shared pain, creating a global inside joke. You’re not just a customer; you’re a co-conspirator in the absurdity of modern life. That’s branding with a wink.

 

Or venture into the hallowed, humourless halls of Central Banking. Enter Mahmoud Mohieldin, former IMF bigwig and UN Special Advocate. In a room choking on jargon, he reframes complex SDG financing as “trying to fit an elephant into a Smart car… and then convincing the elephant it’s a spa day.” Boom. The abstract becomes visceral, memorable, human. He doesn’t dumb it down; he frames it up. That’s the weight of wisdom, delivered with the levity of a feather that somehow tips the scale.

This isn’t about being a clown. It’s about being a conductor. The humour is the melody that makes the heavy bassline of your message travel further.

 

In the close tango of life, where gravity constantly leads, humour is the perfect, spontaneous dip. It’s the flash of insight that makes the whole dance memorable.

 

What If You Were Told Gandhi Weaponised Humour?

 

Look at his quote ” I object to violence because when it appears to do good, the good is only temporary; the evil it does is permanent.” Nah, he’d quip to Brits: “There are only two days in the year you have no control over: yesterday and tomorrow.” Talk about mic drop from a loincloth.

 

An offbeat example if I may— Meet Ignaz Semmelweis, 1840s Hungarian doc who slashed childbirth deaths by mandating handwashing. Colleagues laughed him out of Vienna, called him a nut. He died in an asylum, raving. Fast-forward: Germ theory vindicates him. Moral? Humour could’ve saved him—imagine skewering snobs with: “Pus under nails? Darling, that’s not fashion; it’s a fatality waiting to happen.” Intrigue: Hospitals now train docs in comedy to boost empathy and compliance. Your scalpel? Wit.

 

Mark Twain said, “Humor is mankind’s greatest blessing.” I’d argue it’s also our sneakiest teacher.

 

Three’s Company and Good To Takeaway

 

Start with self-deprecation. Nobody trusts perfect. When Howard Schultz admitted Starbucks initially served terrible coffee, he didn’t lose credibility—he gained humanity. As Groucho Marx said, “I don’t want to belong to any club that would accept me as a member.” Self-awareness is comedy. Comedy is connection.

 

Use the “callback” technique. Comedians circle back to earlier jokes. In presentations, referencing your opening hook at the close creates satisfying symmetry. Memory loves patterns wrapped in laughter. It’s the mental equivalent of: “Wait, didn’t he mention that CEO and the window earlier? Oh, I see what he did there…”

 

Find the “Benign Violation.” Psychologist Peter McGraw‘s theory: Humour happens when something is simultaneously wrong yet okay. That’s why we laugh at slipping on banana peels but not broken bones. Navigate this space, and you’ve found comedic—and creative—gold.

 

The Last Laugh

 

Steve Martin once said, “Comedy is not pretty.” He’s right. It’s messy, risky, and often born from pain disguised as play.

 

But here’s something worth worth embracing: The people who understand the gravity of things are often the ones who use levity most effectively. Churchill led Britain through hell with wit as his weapon. “I may be drunk, Miss, but in the morning I will be sober and you will still be ugly.” Savage? Yes. Memorable? Forever.

 

Life’s absurd enough without us taking ourselves too seriously. Charlie Chaplin knew that when he said: “A day without laughter is a day wasted.”

 

We can argue a strategy without humour is similarly squandered.

 

The brands, leaders and cultures that will endure are not the loudest or the cleverest. They will be the ones brave enough to smile at themselves, sharp enough to smile at the world, and wise enough to know when silence needs a punchline.

In an age drowning in opinions, humour still cuts through because it respects the audience’s mind while disarming their defences.

 

So go ahead—make ’em laugh. But more importantly, make ’em think while they’re laughing.

 

Because in the end, the best ideas don’t just change minds. They tickle them first.

 

And isn’t that a better way to start a revolution?

 

 

Let’s start with the obvious, shall we?

 

In India, love doesn’t come with a box of chocolates. It comes with a calibrated, unsolicited diagnosis of your BMI, melanin levels, and general physical presence. “Arre, you’ve become so thin!” isn’t concern—it’s a tactical opening gambit. “Beta, you’re looking…healthy,” isn’t a compliment—it’s a coded missile launched across the dining table. We are a culture where “You look tired” means “You look like hell,” and “Have you been out in the sun?” is just passive-aggressive poetry for “You’ve achieved a new shade of dusk.”

 

Welcome to the grand, chaotic, deeply irritating ecosystem where affection and audit are locked in a close, sweaty tango. And here I am, your irreverent guide(unappointed of course), weighing in (see what I did there?) with all the weight, wisdom, and weightage I can muster—which, according to at least one reel-a-tive last Diwali, is “a little more than advisable, but your face is so shiny!”

 

What if every time someone “lovingly” pointed out your body, you sent them an invoice for emotional labour and gym membership? They’d stop. Or you’d be rich. Either way, you win.

 

At every Indian Wedding Ever:

 

Aunty emerges from the samosa queue like a heat-seeking missile. Target acquired: You. Her opening gambit? “Arrey, you’ve become SO thin! Are you eating properly? What will people say?”

 

Rewind a bit: Last year, she said you were “putting on weight” and should “control.”

 

Welcome to the Indian Body Commentary Olympics, where everyone’s a judge, nobody asked for their opinion, and the scores are wildly inconsistent.

 

Question is: Is it Love, Concern, or Casual Cruelty?

 

A sneak peek at Indian “concern“—it wears the mask of affection while delivering precision strikes to your self-esteem.

 

We’ve somehow convinced ourselves that commenting on someone’s physical appearance is not just acceptable but mandatory. It’s the conversational equivalent of a handshake. “Hello, you look darker. What happened?” is considered small talk, not psychological warfare.

 

The Greatest Hits Collection( coming soon to Spotify | Apple | Amazon):

 

“You’ve become so dark! Stop roaming in the sun.”

“Arrey, why so thin? Eat something, will you?”

“You’re putting on weight, no? Better watch it before marriage.”

“Fair-skinned girls have better prospects.” (If you read between the lines, it means: You don’t.)

 

And the sucker punch? All delivered with a smile, often while shoving another ladoo into your hand.

 

Love, But Make It Violent

Indian body shaming is rarely loud.
It arrives smiling.
Wrapped in affection.
Delivered as “concern”.

It never says, “I judge you.”
It says, “I care.” As if you care!

And that’s the genius of it.

Because when cruelty dresses up as care, the victim is left with no rebuttal.
You can’t protest without sounding ungrateful.
You can’t object without appearing oversensitive.
You’re expected to accept the wound and thank the weapon.

The Real Damage Is Not on the Body

Let’s be precise.
Body shaming doesn’t hurt bodies.
It colonises self-worth.

It teaches people to:

• Shrink before they speak
• Laugh off insults to stay lovable
• Measure confidence in inches and shades
• Apologise for occupying space

It turns mirrors into interrogation rooms.
And compliments into suspicious events.

Worst of all, it trains victims to become future perpetrators, passing the same comments down like family silver.

Ever noticed how the loudest body comments come from people who’ve made peace with none of their own mirrors?

Classic Examples That Permeate This Ecosystem (A Short, Infuriating List):

The Wedding Waistline Watch: The marriage mandap isn’t just a sacred canopy; it’s a forensic lab. Every auntie is a scientist examining the specimen. “You’ve lost weight for the wedding? Good, good.” (Implied: You were substandard before.) Or the classic, “She’s such a pretty face. If only…” (The sentence trails off, but the ghost of the unfinished clause—“if only she dropped 15 kilos”—hovers over the gulab jamun tray.)

 

The Sunlight Conspiracy Theory: My personal favourite. As if darkness is not a pigment but a moral failing, a result of reckless cavorting in daylight. “You’ve become so dark!” is delivered with the gravitas of announcing a terminal illness. The prescribed cure? A slurry of ubtan, avoidance of the nearest star, and a side order of internalized shame.

 

The Backhanded Buffet of Concern: It’s a masterpiece of doublespeak. “You’re looking too thin, are you eating?” swiftly followed by, “But don’t eat too much maida, you’ll get fat.” You are Schrödinger’s cat—simultaneously too much and not enough, locked in a box of someone else’s making.

 

This isn’t affection. This is performance art in projection. It’s a societal tick, a conversational filler more reflexive than asking about the weather. It fills awkward silences by creating far more profound, awkward silences within the recipient.

 

Dear Victim, This Is Not a Pep Talk

You are not “too sensitive.”
You are too aware.

You are not overreacting.
You are finally reacting at the correct volume.

And no, you don’t owe politeness to people who mistake proximity for permission.

Here’s the truth they won’t tell you:

Your body is not a topic.
It’s not a before-after slide.
It’s not a community project.
It’s not an emotional punching bag dressed as affection.

Your silence was never grace.
It was conditioning.

But Why Though?

 

Because we’ve confused surveillance with love.

 

Because controlling someone else’s body gives us the illusion of control in our own messy lives.

 

Because colorism, fatphobia, and patriarchal beauty standards didn’t just permeate our society—they threw a house party and never left. Talk about trespassing!

 

And because—let’s be honest—we’re terrified of actual vulnerability. Easier to comment on someone’s waistline than ask, “How’s your heart doing?”

 

The Inspiration Bit (For the Victims, Warriors, Survivors)

Listen up:

 

Your body is not a conversation starter. It’s not a democracy. It doesn’t require a consensus.

 

The same people monitoring your weight aren’t paying your bills, fighting your battles, or living your life. Their commentary has an expiration date of exactly zero seconds.

 

Here’s your new script(remember I am a budding scriptwriter too):

 

Reframe the Narrative: That comment says precisely nothing about your worth and everything about the commentator’s limited imagination. Their vocabulary of care is impoverished. You are not the problem; their outdated dictionary is.

 

Master the Deflective Art of the Witty Retort: You don’t need aggression. You need audacity. To “You’ve become so dark!” try a pondering, “Yes, I’m charging my solar panels. The coal crisis, you know.” To “You’ve gained weight!” a cheerful, “Thank you! I’ve been working hard on my gravitational pull. It’s for science.” Watch them sputter. It’s therapeutic.

 

Claim Your Body as a Non-Negotiable Sovereign State: Your body is not up for public debate in the parliament of random relatives. It is the vessel that carries your genius, your kindness, your dreams. Its job is to function, not to decorate someone else’s narrow fantasy. The only weight you need to drop is the weight of their opinion.

 

This tango needs a new rhythm. One where we step on the toes of outdated norms and dance to a tune of unapologetic self-possession.

 

Remember: Every minute spent defending your body to someone else is a minute stolen from actually living in it.

 

The Final Word | The Last Laugh

 

The next time someone tries to gift-wrap their body shaming as concern, remember—you’re under no obligation to accept deliveries you didn’t order.

 

Your body is yours. Their opinions are theirs. Never confuse the two. They are mutually exclusive.

 

Now go forth and exist gloriously, unapologetically, exactly as you are. The aunties will talk anyway. Might as well give them something real to discuss.

 

Like your absolute refusal to care.