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It's brand Prahlad now

It's high time the ad world woke up to social responsibility, says ad guru Prahlad Kakkar

Photo: P.V. SIVAKUMAR

MAN OF MANY HATS Prahlad Kakkar: `Whatever I do is either an extension of a hobby, something I've grown up with, or a passion'

Ads have a way of penetrating the brain as few other elements of mass media do. Sometimes touching, sometimes funny, usually smart and always concise. Some of them remain with us through a lifetime, though the person behind the ad, whose creative genius powered its success, may remain a faceless entity. Not so adman Prahlad Kakkar, he of the long mane, usually crowned by a floppy hat.

Legend has it he has a large collection of them, all nearly identical. Perhaps it's emblematic that the man who wears many hats in the end wears just one. Because the filmmaker, scuba diver, restaurateur and AIDS counsellor reiterates his different kinds of work are not actually different trades, because they all stem from the same source. "Always remember, whatever I do is either an extension of a hobby, something I've grown up with, or a passion."

Some would call it the secret of his success. Kakkar, with all his down-to-earth friendliness, can't escape the label of success now. To be asked to play yourself in a film has got to be the ultimate proof of celebrity. And that is what he does in Corporate.

How was it to be at the receiving end of the megaphone? Kakkar laughs his contagious laugh. "Well, the director called me up one day and said, `Would you like to play yourself?' I said don't be stupid, I'm not getting in front of the camera."

What clinched the deal was the assurance that he would "get to kiss Bipasha Basu." And Kakkar's "half-a-second" scene was in, though in his self-deprecatory manner, he feels Corporate director Madhur Bhandarkar "put his reputation at risk"!

Kakkar, though, has moved on to greater projects. Last heard to be making his own full-length feature film, Bitter Rain, he says his team is actually working on two or three scripts, which he should be ready to talk about in a couple of months, during which time he hopes to arrange the funding.

Meanwhile, the man who exemplifies living in the present — an "extended present tense" — is opening his third restaurant. While his Sarson da Saga (based on the love story of "Sarson Kaur and Saga Singh") is doing fine business, next on the cards is Sarak Chhap, specialising in street food. The first was over 20 years ago with Jennifer Kapoor at Prithvi theatre.

The restaurant business was a natural extension of the wonderful cooking that went on in the office, "where the food was free". When Genesis Films acquired the reputation for being the best restaurant in Mumbai because it was free, it was time to set up business.

On a serious note, he points out that his team works with him on all his multifarious projects — now cooking, now landing on the beaches, now making an ad film or two, and, for the past two years, counselling other companies on how best to absorb HIV-positive people in the workforce. There is nothing contradictory in a bunch of dream-sellers making efforts in this direction. Kakkar is convinced that the ad world should be trying to change society, and has the power to do so, though it is not doing enough at present.

"Actually it is the mouthpiece of the establishment," says the man who refuses to make ads for fairness creams because they "are retrogressive and reinforce an opinion that is obsolete".

ANJANA RAJAN

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