WHAT I LEARNT FROM MY COMPETITOR(22)
“You don't Need to Walk the
Talk if you Can Write it“
Agnello Dias, Cofounder, Taproot India (now Taproot Dentsu)
THE LESSON: Many years ago
when I was just about getting the hang of advertising, the art of writing copy
was the biggest litmus test for all writers. And of course we had the pantheon
of writing sainthood to look up to.Mohammed Khan, Chris D'Rozario, Frank
Simoes, Alok Nanda and so many more.Naïve and scared witless at the landslide
of sharp metaphors and delicate idioms that flowed out of their pens onto our
newspapers every Saturday, I knew that I would never be able to match even 20%
of their genius. I was lesser-read, lesser-articulate and lesser-aware than any
writer I knew.
Worse, I had decided that I
didn't even `look' like a writer, leave alone write like one. All it took was
one look at all the gentlemen mentioned above and you just knew they were born
to write. Intelligent, sharpwitted, self-aware and with the smug lazy elegance
of the truly talented, they looked like they could write poetry with a teaspoon
if they wanted to.
I, on the other hand, did
not even `look' the part. My words were allergic to my face.We're talking about
the early '90s here, no internet, no Google... and maybe aspiring writers
caught strange phobias, who knows.
And then out of the blue, a
writer called KS Gopal won Copywriter of the Year. Another one who probably
looks like he walked out of the editorial credits of GQ or Esquire, I thought.
Till I met Gopal and it
opened my world.
Here was this sweet,
simple, God-fearing, neighbourly-looking boy who looked like he was stepping
out of Malgudi Days only to write the A4s off everybody. Like hell, he didn't
look the proverbial `part' and boy, did he make me change my writing instead of
my appearance.
It was a really stupid
lesson that I should never have had to learn, come to think of it.But I learned
that you don't need to walk the talk if you can write it.
It's not how writers look,
it's how their words look that matters. After all, we can be anything we write.
A Trojan horse, an angry eunuch, a loving cripple, a blue whale with an ego, a
bipolar playboy, a little girl who talks to her bicycle... I've never looked
into the mirror again.
(As told to Delshad Irani)
ETM27DEC15
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