Kartik Dayanand Boddapati

Architect by qualification, digital strategist by profession, blogger & movie buff by passion. Once upon a time vfx supervisor. Founder of the publishing house Mind u Read Media.

My blog is now also available on 'The Times Of India' website.

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Also catch me on my YouTube channel: Kartik Dayanand

Some reactions to my blog posts:

I am thrilled to read your piece. I want to meet you - Ram Gopal Varma

Fantastic!!! What insight. I am impressed - SS Rajamouli

A thought-provoking discussion on corruption going beyond the LokPal Bill - Shashi Tharoor

A wonderful piece written by one of our crew, check it out - Abhishek Bachchan

This is great stuff, must read - Pritish Nandy

A beautifully argued smoking gun. You REALLY need to read it if you’re interested in this space and in the future of free speech and the Internet itself - Richard Metzger

Intriguing for this non-Facebook user: @KartikDayanand on the real Enemy of the Internet - Shashi Tharoor

Extremely smart writing – Arindam Chaudhuri

An extremely beautiful piece on 'Manam' - Ram Gopal Varma

Reach me at: kartik@minduread.com

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Tweets by Kartik Dayanand

The Misunderstood Animal: Why Ranvijay Singh Balbir is a Feminist

By Kartik Dayanand Boddapati

In this age of short attention spans Sandeep Reddy Vanga has done the unthinkable with his latest film Animal—he has not only managed to hold our attention in the theatres with a film that’s three hours twenty one minutes long, but also managed to sustain that attention by turning the movie into a topic of intense debate that’s still going on. Like everyone else I have an opinion too, rather opinions, and have been tweeting intermittently about them, but the film’s success as well as the criticism it has been receiving calls for deeper introspection. Through this post I hope to touch upon some of the aspects that I found interesting about the film; both good and bad. In the process I’ll also try and explain why I feel Ranbir Kapoor’s character in the film Ranvijay Singh Balbir is a feminist and not a misogynist. I suspect many others feel that way too but don’t realise it yet or are able to say it out loudly. Hear me out and then you can either agree or disagree wit...

The Age of Bhakti: A Prescription for Disaster!

By Kartik Dayanand Boddapati

There’s one question on a lot of people’s minds these days: "Is the colossal mismanagement of India’s Covid-19 crisis going to dent Narendra Modi’s image…will his blind followers finally open their eyes?" The short answer is: NO . The long answer is complicated. I said in an earlier blogpost that there are only two kinds of people in this world – those who love Modi, and those who hate him; there’s no one in the middle. Back then I spoke briefly about those who love him unconditionally despite his many failings. I didn’t shy away from calling them Bhakts. That was more in the context of their anger against the Congress party. There are many other reasons too, but in this post, I am going to focus on what I think is the single biggest subconscious reason why someone turns into a Bhakt. And mind you, I am not using the word Bhakt in a frivolous manner. I am treating this matter with utmost seriousness. I am intrigued by their condition, and you’ll know...

Missing the asli swaad of the original Cadbury Dairy Milk ad

By Kartik Dayanand Boddapati

Everyone’s been going gaga over the new Cadbury Dairy Milk ad — a faithful recreation of its own iconic asli swaad zindagi ka ad from 1993. The original ad evokes a lot of nostalgia for many of us and this re-creation milks that emotion very well. The twist with the gender reversal is the key point that made everyone fall in love with it. I however feel there is one critical aspect of the original that the new one completely misses. Before I speak about it, let’s see what the new ad does. Here goes…

Why BJP will never accept that CAA NRC protests are real

By Kartik Dayanand Boddapati

This blogpost is available as a video on YouTube as well as Facebook . It's my first attempt at video blogging. You prefer reading it the usual way; then here it is: Someone wrote to me recently on Twitter, saying he enjoys all my tweets there except for when I criticize Narendra Modi. His Blood Pressure goes up it seems. We both laughed…but I also realized that it’s not just his problem. I get pissed off too, when I see people blindly defending some dumb action of the government. Is it safe to say we both are in the same boat? Maybe – maybe not. It depends on whether we are looking at events in isolation or looking at the big picture. The CAA and NRC debate is a classic example of the same. Most sensible people could put 2 and 2 together and see what this combo could do, and they protested. Whereas others chose to only look at the narrow picture – a part of the issue – and they continue to ask - how does CAA affect any Indian? It is only for refugees of 3 c...

The Scarcity Mindset: Reclaiming the value of our time

By Kartik Dayanand Boddapati

They say every unpleasant situation also has a positive side to it. It ends up teaching us new lessons. Like a silver lining for a cloud. In the same manner, I learnt an interesting lesson recently. I call my lesson ‘The Scarcity Mindset’ . It’s a key ingredient of our being and something we seem to have totally forgotten when it concerns our online personas. This post is my tiny attempt to share what I learnt. I hope you see value in it too. Here’s my story.

Republic of Akhanda: Where fiction gets real!

By Kartik Dayanand Boddapati

In early 2021 I wrote a blogpost called “The Age of Bhakti” . The summary or core theme of the post was this: When society and its institutions fail...we have no other option but to depend on the divine. The recent Telugu blockbuster ‘Akhanda’ is a manifestation of the same concept in an over-the-top commercial format. Most movies operate in the first part of the summary I shared — where society’s institutions fail and a do-gooder hero who is usually above the law of the land comes in to fix things. In the process our heroes even break the laws of physics as if it is their birthright, and we accept it without questioning or wondering how such things are possible. The whole act of watching movies is a process of suspension of disbelief. The legendary actor Balakrishna is known to do these gravity and logic defying acts in the most convincing manner and his two previous collaborations with the director Boyapati Srinu have been huge blockbusters at the box offic...

K.G.F vs K.G.F: Why I like Chapter 1 better than Chapter 2

By Kartik Dayanand Boddapati

If ever there is a competition to determine who is the biggest fan of K.G.F Chapter 1, I would either win that contest hands down or end up as one of the strongest contenders. I lost count of the number of times I watched that film, but I am sure it will be over 100 times. As a keen observer of films, and how they work on our psyche, I’ve been fascinated by the appeal of this film. So much so that I’ve started writing a book about it. It’s the second book in my upcoming book series ‘Movies Beyond Stars’ . As a natural outcome of my fascination for K.G.F Chapter 1, I turned into the unofficial cheerleader of K.G.F Chapter 2 on Twitter. For a few years now I have been repeatedly saying that Chapter 2 had the best chances of success as a pan-India film compared to all other films, even above RRR. So, when the big day arrived, I was not surprised to see the outcome - the record breaking collections of Chapter 2. I went ahead and watched the film too. ...

Artificial Intelligence vs Authentic Intelligence: The moral battle of the future

By Kartik Dayanand Boddapati

We have been reading many stories about Artificial Intelligence (AI), especially since the emergence of ChatGPT—a generative AI tool that possesses immense human-like powers to consume and create content on the fly. They say only those who embrace AI will thrive in the future, and that it will replace most jobs that humans can do today. There are others, like Elon Musk, who say this AI technology has the potential to go rogue and it needs to be regulated before it’s too late. Whatever the verdict on that, and whether people choose to use these AI tools or not, one thing is for sure: AI is going to impact all our lives at a very fundamental human level, and there’s no escaping that. To illustrate my point, I would like to share three mini stories that I encountered recently. These are simple stories; not about the wonderful things AI can do for us; but about our reaction to that as humans—leading to the discussion about the battle we all will find ourse...

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