Multifaceted legacy of advertising genius and theatre pioneer Alyque Padamsee

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Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. MUMBAI : The godfather of Indian advertising and the patriarch of English theatre in India are two terms often used to describe Alyque Padamsee. That might be too limiting.

For Padamsee had the spirit of an iconoclast, which led him to push the boundaries of whatever it was that he set his sights on. In the foreword to his autobiography tantalisingly titled Double Life, Dushyant Mehta, then director, Repro India Ltd, narrates a joke about the man popular in advertising circles: “Alyque Padamsee, chief executive of Lintas, also known as ‘God’, had a secretary called Jenny Pope. To meet God, you first had to meet the Pope." That sums up his impact on generations of Indian advertising professionals who either worked with him over the 14 years from 1979 to 1993 when he ran Lintas or merely glanced through his creative oeuvre.

That last is the stuff of legend and why he’s universally rated as an advertising genius who created some of the most memorable campaigns seen in India in the 1970s through 1990s. This was pre-liberalization India, where a combination of rapidly failing socialism and stifling social mores kept a tight lid on natural aspirations and dreams. Yet, where others saw an old India of restrictions and limitations, Padamsee viewed the country from the lens of an emerging generation that was looking to express itself.

Thus emerged the Liril girl in 1975, a symbol of this new India that was shedding some of the inhibitions of the past and giving herself permission to dream and even fantasize. Model Karen Lunel, cavorting in a bikini under a waterfall, was a thousand Indian housewives enjoying themselves in the privacy of a bath. Following Liril came ads for Cherry Blossom, Surf,