Blueprint

Separated by 180 million years. United by Gondwana.

My birthplace in Kerala and my home near the Blue Mountains sit on the same geology. The mist is the same. The silence is the same.

I followed the rocks home.

I started a three year degree in 1995.

I walked out in 1998 without finishing it. I came back and passed it in 2000.

Thirteen papers failed. Not thirteen exams. Thirteen papers, several of them more than once.

There is a version of this where I tell you what it taught me. There is no lesson. I was nineteen, I was not doing the work, and it took five years to finish something that takes three.

I mention it because every portfolio you read is a story of ascent, and mine has a five year hole in the middle of it. You would find out eventually. Better it comes from me.

CMS College, Kottayam. Four years, four contests.

The 213 is the one I am proud of. It was the only one that was about the writing.

People ask how many. Somewhere between five hundred and a thousand, and that's an estimate, not a count.

Dogs, cats, parrots, mynahs, chickens, rabbits, turkeys, guinea pigs, ducks. All of it, at some point, in one house in Kottayam.

The crows were the ones I got closest to. A hand-feeding relationship, patient enough that a few would take food straight from my fingers.

I stopped counting because counting was never the point.

These are people I read. Not people I worked for.

David Ogilvy. Taught that a good idea has to sell something, not just win applause.

David Abbott. Taught restraint. The best line is usually the one you almost cut.

Neil French. Taught that copy can carry a voice, not just a message.

Piyush Pandey. Taught that the truest ads sound like the country they were made in.

Prathap Suthan. Taught that Indian advertising never needed to borrow its confidence.

Bill Bernbach. Proved an agency could run on a philosophy, not a process.

Alyque Padamsee. The reason Indian advertising has a voice worth learning from at all.

A dream I kept folding smaller and smaller so it would stop taking up room.

That is the standard. Everything else gets measured against it.