Writing on power, persuasion and why people do what they do

A one-way mirror in a pale wall, a brightly lit empty room visible through it
A security camera mounted high on a bare white wall
Two chairs facing each other across a bare table in a bright empty room
A metal turnstile standing in a bright, empty concourse
A brass peephole set in a pale painted door, photographed close
A concrete stairwell photographed straight down the open well
Belt barrier posts marking out an empty queue in a bright hall
A bank of monitors on a pale wall, each showing a different empty room
A one-way mirror in a pale wall, a brightly lit empty room visible through it
A security camera mounted high on a bare white wall
Two chairs facing each other across a bare table in a bright empty room
A metal turnstile standing in a bright, empty concourse
A brass peephole set in a pale painted door, photographed close
A concrete stairwell photographed straight down the open well
Belt barrier posts marking out an empty queue in a bright hall

Long pieces on power, manipulation and the reasons people do things they cannot explain afterwards. Written and published in Mumbai by Deepak Sharma.

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The writer

This journal takes one idea at a time and stays with it longer than a post normally allows — the kind of piece worth coming back to rather than skimming once.

A desk under one lamp with an open folder and loose pages lying face down

Written and published by one person, from Mumbai, with no editorial calendar to feed.

Photographs and cards pinned to a wall and connected by taut red string
The edge of a worn keyboard beside a squared-up stack of transcript pages
An office chair pushed back and turned away from a desk

Most of what moves people is ordinary, repeatable, and hiding in plain sight.

A chess board part-way through a game, seen from directly overhead

The Number Everyone Quotes Wrong

[ 9 MIN READ ] [ HOW PEOPLE BUY ] [ 2026 ]

The famous happiness ceiling was corrected in 2023 by the man who found it — and that correction changes what the four things people tell you to upgrade are actually for.

Read series
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Read articles
An empty interview room: one chair under a hard overhead light

The idea

The useful idea is almost never the new one. It is the familiar one, taken seriously for longer than anybody else was willing to.

Annotated pages pressed flat under glass, the writing unreadable
A library card catalogue with one drawer pulled open

Where the notes start, long before any of it is publishable.

The Mirror

People are reliable. Their explanations are not.

A pin tumbler lock cylinder opened up, its pins laid out beside it

Influences

Reference material, half-finished arguments, and the things that turned out to be wrong.

Case files, court transcripts, advertising, Greene and Machiavelli — anything that shows a mechanism working.

The notebook

Mechanism

How the thing actually works, once the story is stripped off it

The exposed brass movement of a mechanical clock
Numbered evidence markers standing on a white table

Evidence

Named sources and stated limits, in place of opinion

A photographic contact sheet lying on a lightbox
A scalpel and a jeweller's loupe set apart on a white surface

Craft

The part of the work that only shows up in the last ten percent

A letterpress type case seen from above, compartments of worn metal sorts
A heavy bench vice closed tight on nothing, its jaws scarred

Pressure

What people do when the incentives stop being comfortable

A pane of glass cracked in a radiating star, lit from behind
A sheet of paper almost entirely struck through with ink crossings-out

Drafts

Thinking published before it has finished being wrong

A metal wastepaper basket overflowing with crumpled paper
A sheet of used carbon paper lifted away from the page beneath