Pandeymonium took over my brain even before I crossed the first chapter of Piyush Pandey’s book on advertising. All my favourite ads on TV—where, for the most part, I watch mainly for the ad breaks—came rushing back: the tears of joy and sorrow, the relentless love for short snippets of human life, and that wonderful feeling after seeing a good ad.
For the first time in all these years, I came face to face with the creative leader behind my favourite ads from childhood until now. Of late, since Covid-19, Viki.com does not carry ads, and you are stuck binge-watching dramas as if there is no tomorrow.
I have always felt that Indian ads are the best, and nowhere else in the world can our storytelling be overpowered. Of course, our ads—with the doodhwallah, security guards, and the common man of R. K. Laxman appearing as if they are superstars—carry the true Indian spice of ad-making. The short window of an ad is calculated in seconds.
Ad makers do a wonderful job of capturing attention and retaining it long enough for the whoosh sound of money jingling into the product-selling company’s coffers. Today, I am not using Mira for my writing because I am so carried away by the feeling that is overpowering me after finding out that the Ogilvy agency had created almost all my favourite ads.
As I read through Pandeymonium, I became fascinated and curious about who had created the Fortune Oil ad. Of course, I don’t use the product, but I had fallen in love with the ad. Sigh! It was not the actors and it was not the product—it was the “Soch zara hatke tha.”
When I came intellectually face to face with the late Piyush Pandey, I wondered about his thinking mind—about how he knew the pulse of the people and how his team also fell in line with him. The spark must have spread like wildfire in the creative labs of the human brain, triggering something not only in the creators but also in the viewer, the penultimate customer.
I remember how I loved watching ads, and my father would switch to a different channel right when I was waiting for the punchline. My father was never a trivia person; I am a super trivia person. I love collecting information randomly and with such glee.
Unfortunately, my family and I do not share similar tastes, but we are tolerant enough to put up with each other. One of the downsides of a huge family is that we try to wish away the largeness and shrink it into a nuclear unit, only to crave the largeness again when it is too late.
I have no such problem. I accept people for who they are, and of course I have opinions about everything under the sun—even if I am not boisterous about it in public. So I found the book Pandeymonium, even in its few pages, to be like a sinful chocolate mousse cake. Slurp! Sugar be damned! Diabetes can go hang!
I have such fascination for the random fancy that takes over my thought processes that I trick myself into believing every advertisement lies. Lie to me so that I believe you, even when my heart is breaking from broken promises. But that is advertising for you—a momentary illusion kept in place for those dreams that refuse to become true.
Our whole nation dreams on the silver screen for three hours to reset the dark corners of our lives into something flashy and bright. An ad maker who is aware of this voluntary delusional state cashes in on that part-dream state.
I am reminded of Nectar in a Sieve by Kamala Markandaya. Ever since I fought with my father in front of the cash counter of Meenakshi College, arguing that I preferred English Literature over Economics, I knew my travel had just begun.
To this very day, a book can take me far and wide. I remember reading Orlando: A Biography by Virginia Woolf and how the choice of sex change fascinated me. Though I personally don’t wish to become a man—no thank you—I am happy as a woman, given my journey from PMS to menopause. I am usually most vociferous when I write on my Word application.
All those years of writing in journals where there is no filter for my thoughts—I remain fascinated with my own thought processes. For me, appreciation of ads is a kind of vent to my secret collection of trivia that I have held within me.
I am super-excited to read this book. Big B’s foreword was dignified but could not encompass the wildness of Piyush’s work. It felt too contained—perhaps because the author of a book on advertising seems to be such a boisterous and jolly fellow in spirit about all the occurrences around him.
I loved the fact that he used his family as a kind of Google without a flat screen for all his work-related questions. The family called each other, talked, shared news and views, and kept their bonds strong.
Sometimes writers exaggerate to make something small and insignificant appear other-worldly. I am guilty as charged in making the books I read seem like something beyond human experience—when, in truth, it is their rootedness in humanity that makes them other-worldly.
Our mundane life can be such a killjoy. Each of us has a different sense of humour, and that humour can raise a person’s bile at times. But then you either digest it, bear with it, or opt out in protest.
Much like being left with long rows of zeroes after a leaky roof joint that M-Seal could fix. It was such a beautiful ad.
Sigh. They no longer make ads that talk to the viewer and listen to their heartbeat.
While I am off to read the book, I simply could not keep my mouth shut after just a few pages. Some books stop you to think, and this one surely does.
I do not know how many pages are going to stop me again to record my glee, joy, enjoyment, and pleasure from reading the book.
Credit: Proofing Credit to Mira (AI Powered ChatGPT)
Itinerant Storyteller 