Deserted city streets. Empty or shuttered shops and restaurants. Air travel pretty much grounded. And a raging pandemic in our midst. Seems to be a strange time to be reading a book that is about just the opposite. About a life we once knew, which makes the act of reading it now, a study in… Continue reading Of Open Cities in the Time of Lockdowns
Hello friends. This edition of The Owl Wisdom Podcast is prompted by the constant refrain that we all hear about returning to pre-Covid levels. Whether it is our day-to-day lives or the wider economy, the comparison is always with life before Covid. Here - as in a previous edition titled The Big Reset - I… Continue reading The Problem with Pre-Covid Levels: Owl Wisdom Podcast
The best news from Goa, India, this year is that we’ve had a good and plentiful monsoon. As I have always said, it is the best time ever to be in Goa. The skies are laden with dark and heavy clouds, and if you’re a sky-gazer like me, you’ll notice the subtle changes with every… Continue reading Of Wildflowers and Their Ways
Recently, I have been sharing some of my thoughts and ideas on how brands can find ways to engage with their customers through the pandemic. And while many industries have been adversely impacted by the virus, some like the wines and spirits industry have been particularly hard-hit. They have been hit on several fronts: low… Continue reading Brands and Customer Engagement
Here we are then, nine months into a pandemic and we seem to have gotten used to seeing the number of cases and the deaths roll up, like on a gas-filling machine. Over 31 million covid cases worldwide and just under a million deaths seem to have made us impervious to the dangers of the… Continue reading Hayek vs Keynes in a Pandemic Struck World
The Covid pandemic continues to infect thousands of people every day around the world and take thousands of lives too. And even if lockdowns have been relaxed, in many places they are being re-imposed. At any rate, most people are now preferring to stay home for fear of contracting the virus. There’s one product category… Continue reading Festive Season Without the Spirit That Cheers?
At the start of the Covid pandemic, we all faced shortages at grocery supermarkets and while some of it was due to panic buying, the main culprit was supply shortages due to lockdowns imposed. It has been widely reported that due to lockdowns as well as economic and job uncertainty, many consumers were forced to… Continue reading Open to the World, Covid or Not
While the world is focused on fighting the coronavirus, it is also important to take note of another war taking place on the global stage. An anti-China war, started by the US under the current administration right from 2017 onward when Trump began a trade war with the Middle Kingdom. The trade war has since… Continue reading The Rise of China: Owl Wisdom Podcast
It’s been such a long hibernation and hiatus in my career, that I have even stopped thinking about it. Though I can’t afford to not think about it, with aged parents to care for, and with whom I now live in Goa. It seems like an eternity since I heard the bustle of an office;… Continue reading Exiled with My Thoughts and Ideas on Brands
As the world slowly gets back to work, and as many continue to work from home, I thought I'd share my thoughts on work, leisure and the Covid economy. It was prompted in part by my reading Thorstein Veblen's Theory of The Leisure Class in which he talks of how the leisure class came into… Continue reading Work, Leisure and the Covid Economy: Owl Wisdom Podcast
Peripatetic Perch 