Thread by @twinsighter

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Back in 1993, I was in the throes of an MBA and found myself in a summer internship at a leading ad agency in Bangalore, hoping for release and redemption.

I fancied, with no real reason for such confidence, that I would be good at advertising.

The internship taught me many things.
- I roamed many corners of Bangalore on foot and by autorickshaw, into many electronics retailers, talking to them about which brands of audio systems (they weren’t called music players back then) they carried, and what they felt about them.

- I saw firsthand the emergence of the Shiv Sagar genre of fast food restaurants spring up, mostly from the outside, because the internship didn’t pay me well enough to do more than just look longingly at the Mysore bonda freshly stacked on the counters.

- I learnt the basics of navigating in Kannada—leftu, rightu, straightu.

- I felt hep (that was the "in" word back then) walking up and down Brigade Road, saving up enough at the end of the summer to buy a t-shirt from the streetside vendors at the non-hep end of Brigade Road.

- I experienced what it feels like to have a boss who doesn’t care what you do, and worse, goes out of his way to make life difficult for you. It imprinted on me to never ever become that kind of boss, if I ever got to lead a team in the future.

In short, it didn’t really give me any real reason for choosing advertising as a profession.
Except for one thing.
Or, rather, one person.
On a rare day, I’d be in the office, not being shooed out of a store because the salesperson would rather engage with a paying customer.

And I bumped into this copywriter in the agency.

He was this lean, lanky guy who just seemed utterly comfortable in his own skin. And he’d become a copywriter after having obtained an engineering degree from IIT Madras and a finance MBA from IIM (Ahmedabad, I think).

“I don’t get it,” I told him one day when I’d mustered up the courage to talk to him. “How did you end up as a copywriter after getting engineering and finance degrees?”

“Well,” he answered, without any bemusement or condescension, “the engineering degree taught me how to be analytical. And the finance degree helped me understand how business works. Copywriting is just craft to best express the problem you have solved in words.”

Time overlaid many filters that made memory less sharp in many ways.

I finished my MBA and took up a job as the lowest paid graduate of my class, as a copywriter in Hyderabad, first at an established agency and then at a start-up.

I moved to the U.S. for several years, came back to India in 2007, and found a job in Delhi. Several more years passed before a chance conversation with @meajay triggered those words again.

I’d forgotten the name and face of the person who uttered them, but I’d never forgotten the guiding light those words had become for me.

When I told Ajay what I remembered of the place, the person and the words, he said, “There’s only one person who fits that description."

"He continues to be one of the sharpest people in the profession, self-effacing, master story-teller, and one of the keenest observers of people.”
“And I can put you in touch with him,” Ajay said.
I did get in touch with him. And he did acknowledge that the description fit him.

I’m still to meet him in person again.

I’m hoping to correct that one of these days soon.

But I thought now would be a good time as any to say this.

Thanks, @ramkid!