Uniquely India - Digital Opportunity

Book Cover designed for Kalaari Capital's Uniquely India - Digital Opportunity book. The theme and metaphor used for the book and cover was Mudras.

Mudras are hand gestures or symbols that are used to convey material and abstract concepts in Buddhism, yoga and traditional Indian dance forms (like Bharatnatyam, Kathakali and Odissi). In a sense, Mudras are to Indian dance in the same way that icons are to current day user interfaces.

These single and double-handed Mudras serve as vocabulary that is itself replete with symbolism and has various different interpretations. The meaning of each Mudra depends on the context of the story as well as interpretation of the viewer.

The Mudras are an example of how Indian culture assigns value to objects and ideas only with respect to context; nothing significant can exist in singularity. We see the same with contemporary innovations. Western concepts that transit to India find completely new use cases, and even those that are born in the country serve different parts of the population in unanticipated ways. The value they deliver is influenced by how the story is told and, most importantly, who is watching.