A caricature of a traditional Indian man

In India, every interaction is an interview.

From the moment you enter a room, a silent, invisible scan begins. It is a social sonar, pinging off your accent, your clothes, your confidence, and the brand of your phone, sending back a detailed map of your place in the world.

The Social Sonar: The invisible scan of Indian social life

Most of us are completely unaware of this process. We move through our lives like open books, not realizing that every page is being read, interpreted, and filed away.

This is the first and most fundamental kind of ‘telling.’ It is the story you tell without ever opening your mouth.

Consider the archetype we all know: the wealthy businessman who owns half a street but carries a five-year-old Samsung phone with a cracked screen, held together by a rubber band. Is he cheap? Is he eccentric? Or is he a genius?

The answer is that he is none of those things. He is a strategist. He is not being cheap; he is sending a message. That battered phone is a carefully crafted broadcast, a non-verbal signal designed to manage his social environment. It tells a story: “I am a serious person of substance, not a frivolous consumer. I am not a source of easy money. I am not a target.”

He is actively ‘keeping’ his true financial status from the casual observer, not by lying, but by controlling the signals he broadcasts.

This book is about learning to see this invisible scan. It is about understanding that we are all, constantly, telling stories about ourselves, whether we intend to or not. The goal is not to become paranoid, trying to control every signal. That is the path to madness. The goal is to become aware. It is to understand the difference between the signals you cannot control and the information you absolutely can.

This is the art of keeping. It is the art of moving from being a passive subject of the scan to an active author of your own story.