Things on my mind.

Cricket fans and football fans keep mocking each other and both are missing the point. Cricket was not always this big. It got big on purpose, and the method is sitting right there in our own history.

India sold Indonesia BrahMos missiles and everyone stopped at the missiles. The real move was Sabang, a port at the top of Sumatra sitting right next to the strait China cannot afford to lose.

Australia finally sold India uranium after 12 years of no. Everyone is asking why it said yes. The real question is why it said no for so long, and what changed. It was not India. It was China.

Everyone calls India indecisive. They have it backwards. India picked a side a long time ago. The side is India, and the oil story, the tariffs and Galwan all prove the same thing.

A new chief just took charge of the Andaman and Nicobar Command. Those islands sit like a cork at the mouth of the one strait nearly all of China's oil and trade has to cross. Here is why that matters.

Social media swears India and Russia are inseparable brothers. The real bond is older, colder and purely transactional, and that is exactly what makes it useful to India.

Everyone watched Washington. India quietly swept five countries in six days and went after the Netherlands, Italy and the Nordics. Capability, not size, plus a Melody moment with Meloni in Rome.

The boom is real, nearly doubled in four years. But follow the money and almost all of it lands in cricket, the IPL, the broadcasters and a few star players. Everyone else fights over the scraps.

Nations run on the same playbook as brands. Positioning, narrative, perception management, competitor analysis. The only difference is the stakes are higher and the consequences last centuries instead of quarters.

The West wants India to take one side. Russia wants India to stay close. India looked both in the eye and said, we decide what is good for our people.

I visited where Amul started. The idea that built one of India's most iconic brands came from a problem, not a product.

A company supplying Costco, Walmart, Marriott and Hilton from a 2,500 acre campus in a district most people only know because of the 2001 earthquake. Most Indians cannot place the name. I could not either.

Real Madrid did not become the team people love to hate by accident. There is a brand strategy behind all of it.