A Snapshot

of the Writer in Me....

 

Na bheed ka hissa banna hai,

Na bheed ki aguwaayi karna hai.

Akele hi

Kalam ki aanch pe jhulasna hai,

Akele hi 

Syaahi ki dhaara mein phansna hai.

Aur jo, subah poochhe

ki raat kaisi gayi...?

Hanskar, aagey badhna hai,

Akele hi, 

Andhiyaaron se ulajhna hai.

​

Hello. It’s time for me to come out of the shadows and talk to you.

 

For the last 8 years, many of my ideas have been called ‘too evolved’

and I’ve been forced to dumb down my ideas,

my writing – a lot of times with the simple dictum

that ‘the public won’t understand.’

Yet, as I see it, the public is not one public.

Their languages, expressions, apprehensions, desires,

and perceptions are not one.

They don’t comprise a monolithic whole.

To the contrary, they seem to display

so much variety that advertisers and writers

have difficulty dealing with their demands.

 

That’s why advertising campaigns fail.

That’s why novels fail.

That’s why films that take their audiences for granted

are crushed both at the box-office and in memorability.

But that is also why the newspaper,

and now the internet, succeeds.

That is also why Instagram does so well.

And why YouTube is getting a ton of ads. And views.

What's truly remarkable about the Indian people

is that they are all variedly remarkable

in their love, hate, demands, sacrifices, limitations, and struggles.

And most of the time, they're the vortex of it all, simultaneously.

it's our job as communicators

to take them away from this morass of sensations

and make them feel uniquely about

things and experiences they might come to love.

And to remind them

that at the origin of it all is what they loved

before it all becomes so complex. 

​

​

So yes, I’ll cut the spiel short.

And tell you that I belong to this ‘public’

that is the Indian people.

That is why I’m aware of what hurts them,

what elevates them.

I’m aware of what they will not tolerate

and the limitless bounds of tolerance they display otherwise.

I say this because I see them.

I see them with my eyes, with my anxieties

and my ever so curious nerves.

I see them above all with my mind – a mind deemed abnormal,

laughable a long time ago

because I would make sounds and movements

in places where I supposedly should never have.

It was an older world then.

It was a world where parents wanted their children

to be normal so desperately

that they were blind to who they were.

It was a time when normal was a straight line,

a tight rope that you had to balance on

and learn to walk day in and day out without fail. 

 

But it is that which I chose not to do.

I chose to be me, the boy who would draw more than do math.

The boy who would bat and ball all by himself

and do the commentary and yelp while taking a catch

that had rebounded from the wall, in an imaginary cricket match

even when he was 16.

The consensus was that I was not my age.

And they were right.

I wasn’t my age because my brain didn’t age like usual. 

It did not record experiences the way other minds would.

I say 'brain' for me, and not mind,

because that’s where I’m different.

Because that's what makes me more keen to understand you,

and everyone we talk to when we make ad films. 

 

That’s what gives me the curse

to come up with shit stories and ideas.

And that is what gives me the power

to see truly unique ideas and stories.

 

That is what has enabled me to survive

a home full of domestic violence

without becoming an abuser.

Victims of abuse often turn abusers themselves.

But my mind is a mine of visuals,

not merely a repository of them.

And I know that if this mine is excavated more,

it will yield gems of love, joy, empathy, poetry and stories

that will stand me and those around me in good stead.

 

I’m by no manner fully formed

as a lot of people claim to be or are in a hurry to claim.

But then, if you see the world visually

and then write to bring those visuals alive,

can you ever be fully formed?

I don’t think so.

Some tell me, I should act my age because they do.

Other say that I deliberately put on an act.

Some even say I need to get serious about life.

But then I am serious about life. My life.

My life that holds my body, brain, sensations, and perceptions together.

 

And the way I see my life

is an unravelling through writing

of all that I see passing by, but in ways

that would soothe, scratch, goad or surprise

not just myself, but all those who engage with it.

 

My writing is bigger than me

because it's part of a tradition of viewing the world

with wide-angle lenses.

But yes, it all starts with me. 

 

Which is why,

I feel like my next story should stun me.

My next line

should make me have goosebumps.

My next campaign idea

should force me to say,

oh why did I not think of this earlier?

My next film

should tell me that only I could’ve thought of it

and written it the way only I can.

And my next Big Idea should pierce me, goad me

into feeling how I’m going to match

or excel it

when I think of the next.

 

It's started I feel.

That marathon called the 'hunt for excellence.' It's started.

Thanks a ton, to my therapist Lavanya Kaushal

and Dr. Natasha Kate.

Two people who believed in me

when everything seemed dull, lonely, and meaningless.

When I had started to question

whether being me was even an option.

I’ve spent more than 4 years with them now,

and they’ve let me embrace the powers I come with

as well as the deficiencies.

We all come with our scratches.

The question we need to answer is

whether we want to let the scratches

splinter the light of the world

or

whether we have the power to flip ourselves

and go from tail to heads

and glow in the world's mornings, shimmer in its moonlit nights.

I chose to flip.

And since I've done that

I have been aware of every day as a massive day of possibility for me.

   

So yes...

I joined advertising to survive in this city.

But then I had been advertising

for a lot of my classmates in college

when I wrote their applications for the Rajiv Gandhi Fellowship.

Or wrote the intro to their papers and dissertations.

Or when I was writing a pamphlet for a student election.

Or when I was talking to people from many parts of southern India

about the EFLU Film Club.

I was doing word-of-mouth publicity

even though I didn’t take up the module

that taught advertising in 4 months.

It was all pro-bono,

but it was still trying to get people to do something

for a result.

Remember, Behaviour Change?

That oft-repeated Strategy Meeting jargon

from Marketing Books?

I was changing behaviour, and before that the way someone felt

about a person so that they could a scholarship

or a vote

or getting people to come every Saturday to the Film Screenings

and buy our 50 Rupee ticket.

 

Maybe that’s why I feel that pure, powerful advertising is about results.

 

People should do something that you expect

when you talk to them in a language they get,

in a way and with emphases and pressure points that they live with. 

 

When I joined my first advertising agency in Mumbai,

I got to know that this process gets business

and earns money and pays my salary.

It felt strange.

I got to know many more things.

Primarily that there’s the craft of writing

which is different from the art of writing.

If I asked 'how,'

I was given the example of the difference

between Gulzar and a certain man

who’d written “Ummeedon wali Dhoop” for Coke.

I first asked, why the two are different.

But when I found my question misunderstood

as my inability to understand,

I shook my head, and said, okay.

Because it was important to survive.

 

But now... I can freely ask

whether there's really a difference

between the craft and the art of writing?

Especially for me

who has sees things visually before writing them?

 

Because what is craft, but the ability to see different

and then more different with every attempt.

 

Isn’t craft the capacity to not be fully formed in your writing ever?

The capacity to keep seeing

and to turn off the searchlight of your senses?

And to then make sure

that with every next attempt at it, you enhance it,

economise it, surprise it by seeing and saying things

in ways that haven’t been done before?

And isn’t art… all art exactly that?

Creating a different perspective

on what people see in whatever is the supposed normal way?

And wasn't all art that's regarded as a masterpiece today, as classics,

a paid job for an artist to survive

while seeing and rendering the world differently for others to see? 

 

I’ve learnt a lot from those I’ve worked with.

It can’t be quantified.

But it’s visible in the ideas and the approaches

I’m currently creating.

It's also visible in the ways,

I'm not thinking and will never think.

It’s visible in my search for real insights, real lives, real stories,

and in my drive to do exceptional real work

to creates real impact for brands and their consumers.

 

It’s visible in the two short films

I managed to get done as an Executive Producer. 

And in the lone international Samskara Award,

the more meaningful of the two, “Help!”, won.

 

And it's visible in my belief to walk past those lauding greenhorns

with big-budget educations

and a silver spoon approach to life,

while ignoring the real resolve needed to learn the tough craft

of our business... the packaging of ideas... lines that cut across barriers and talk to all...

and complete immersion in the art of communication,

in the art of creating and recreating culture.

 

And that's the honest me. That's the inner me, made exterior.

You can befriend it, neglect it, use it, employ it,

give it a chance or look askance.

But the one thing you can't do is reengineer it

into grooves of mediocrity and apathy. 

​

But you can also chisel

this supposedly not-neurotypical me,

open your doors and guide it to see bigger,

brighter visions than the kind it does on its own.

Because there's no replacement in the world

for exchange of ideas. And I'm all in for that.

My heart, my mind,

my amygdala and pre-frontal cortex

are all open to it. Not slightly, but with open arms. ​

​

So you good people, what will you do?

​

I'm a sponge

that's never tired of soaking the new,

the never seen before,

but with roots firmly planted

in the depths of my seabed. 

I am me.

I’m ADHD. I’m Tourette’s.

I’m Autism-spectrum. I'm 40.

And yet, not of any age.

I’m my words.

I’m my expressions.

My hashtags, my articulations.

I’m my Big Ideas.

I’m the visuals I think.

I’m my never-give-up effort.

I’m the continuing journey of craft.

I’m the possibility of art.

I’m the films in my head.

I'm the business ideas in my breath.

I’m the ink-pen nib between my fingers.

I’m the blotches, the sensitivity,

the prospect of never being fully formed,

the obstinate senses never tired to learn.

I’m the coming out that was long due.

I’m a lover of the crusade of writing to the real world.

I will write like it's a duel till my very end.

And I will give the world what it deserves.

Masterpieces in communication and story-telling.

The way Piyush Pandey has done

over the last 40 years or more.

The way Mohan Rakesh has done.

The way David Droga & Kubric has done. ​

I'm still the beginning,

never looking at the end.

I would love to share my journey with you

and give you truly what only I can:

my writing style, my wide-angle eye,

my ability to extract large thoughts from small incidents

and the power to criticise myself

and discard what I have written,

the moment it starts seeming it's self-indulgent... 

the imagination to start all over again

in search for the final thought

that every meaningful piece of writing walks into

like rivers flowing into a delta

to be one with the ocean,

which is not one... never one...

'coz if collects and collects

irrespective of the moon, clouds, night

or the Sun. 

​
 

​

​

​​

​

***p.s. I am a secular individual and thinker,

who sees Hindi, Hindostani & Urdu as sister languages,

and not as separate. Did you notice that the word 'dost'

is neatly ensconced between the other letters of

the word Hindostani? I did. That's because 

I understand language sciences and phonetics

to a good extent. Due to the extra courses I took.

Due to my excellent professors and their guidance at

the place that has Asia's best language school,

the EFLU (now known as Vidya Dharma University).

I don't need to keep a dictionary by me to write

in Hindi or Hindustani, the way I see a lot of writers doing.

Hindi & Hindostani, reflect my soul, my voice, my goals. 

Because everything from my anguish to my exultation,

my painful times to my reasonably stable times,

my poverty to my decision to work and go beyond it,

has been filtered through these 2 languages. 

And they are the reason, I transformed into a true-to-himself,

true-to-the-world, writer rather than being the pretentious,

trying to sound sophisticated and cool, but scared 

migrant boy who joined Kirori Man College, Delhi University.

Hindi & Hindustani have been my saviours and my mirror,

and I have much to do and write to be their protector and nurturer.

​​

I'll leave you with a couplet of mine from a poem

that's a favourite of the man

who gave me my first ever chance

in advertising:​

​​​

Jhilmil kartey jugnuon ko,

jahaan koi aur mil gaya hai...

Machineon ke konon se,

waqt ka badan chhil gaya hai...