By Soumitra Sen
Hi Pratap, the world just lost you today. You were so well-known and I’m sure many will be feeling your loss from now on. I have been feeling a bit depressed for the past few weeks from the time I came to know about your diagnosis. Now since you have bid goodbye to us all, I will try and write a few words about how I knew you and the effect you had on a fellow professional from the industry. Here is my ode to you Pratap. I hope you will agree with the words that I write as you smoke your ubiquitous cigarette and look out of your office window telling me some adventurous things that you did. So here it goes….
Pratap’s entry into DDB-Mudra Group was an epochal event. After he joined Mudra, the grapevine in the industry for sometime began to refer to O&M as Ogilvy & Mudra! And, why not? He had fallen out with the top management at Ogilvy on some financial practices that he wasn’t supportive of and walked in with some 40 professionals from Ogilvy into Mudra. Those were the days!
It was quite exciting and breathtaking for us minions in Mudra for the next few months. So many new faces all around us who had come in to give a major push to make Mudra look and feel more western/contemporary (for want of a better word) in its outlook. In those days, Mudra had created a niche, known as an Indian agency for Indian brands. From the faraway perch that I sat within the Mudra ecosystem, I think he was instrumental in convincing Madhukar to make the merger of Mudra with DDB and Omnicom lock, stock and barrel. Those days, both WPP and Omnicom, were serenading Anil Ambani to join them and he was caught in two minds. This dilly-dallying had continued for quite some years with Sir Martin Sorrell from WPP making it a point of having breakfast with Anil Bhai whenever he stepped into the shores of this country. But I think Pratap had experienced everything that had to be seen and known about WPP and in his mind, he wanted Mudra to join the Omnicom bandwagon. Surprisingly, this happened soon enough just a few months after Pratap came into Mudra! Of course Madhukar was the one who had to convince Anil Ambani but the man who persuaded Madhukar to pick up the gauntlet would have been Pratap.
Pratap was seeped in the Ogilvy culture and he wanted to imprint his style into a more conservative Mudra ecosystem. Pratap would have come in with his brigade (Yes, it an army brigade wanting to change things within Mudra in double quick time) without knowing fully well the cultural disparity that one could expect when one moves from a place like Ogilvy to Mudra those days. For example, when he came to know that the top echelons of Mudra who grew up in the Ambani ecosystem were used to calling Mrs Tina Ambani as bhabhi j, he and his team would have been shell-shocked. I reckon that when they would have heard that this was the norm a war room would have happened to strategise on what needed to be done on this issue. He was expected to follow this norm but he never did.
Another thing that amazed us was that he was the only guy who was allowed to smoke inside Mudra offices. His room used to be filled with cigarette smoke whenever we went in for a meeting. I used to almost choke when I entered his office and therefore dreaded such occasions, but conversations with him while he stood outside with his gang where everyone smoked away as if there were no tomorrow was fun-filled and memorable.
He kind of thought that I was the resident doctor as I was heading the healthcare advertising division then, and whenever he had a niggle or any health issue, he used to conspiratorially discuss with me. In fact I used to take him to Kokilaben Hospital quite regularly along with his wife for his yearly check-ups as that hospital was my client for most of my time in DDB Mudra.
In fact, I remember clearly that his first meeting with the executives in Kokilaben Hospital wasn’t really good. I could sense his discomfort while sitting in a meeting with them. In fact the room had a senior person from the hospital who was a Malayali and spoke in Gujarati only in a manner a Malayali can for one whole hour. All the time a TV was on behind us which was displaying the stockmarket prices on that day. My sixth sense was alive, and I began to scheme our escape from that room as quickly as possible before Pratap let off steam!
Will miss you, Pratap. Feel sorry that we lost touch when you got diagnosed with this disease known as the emperor of all maladies! Be happy wherever you are!
Soumitra Sen worked for DDB Mudra Group and many other agencies like Contract, Havas, Madison etc. These days he runs Storytellers, a behaviour change consultancy in the area of development communication.