For a summer trainee (as interns were called, once upon a when) to be summoned to the Big Chief’s room was a big deal, or so I thought. Unsure of beard, prone to being tongue-tied, as I still am, I was nevertheless mildly sure of myself. As a freelance writer, I had met AP, as people in Lintas referred to him, in his other avatar, a theatre person, and had interviewed him (the interview started in the Express Towers elevator, continued in his car, and ended when he reached his destination) a year or so before that, for a newspaper. I had also been to an event that he designed and directed, the opening and closing ceremonies of an athletic meet in Delhi, but I was approximately the 88th-best dancer in a company of 89, so there was no chance he would remember me from that one, but still.
Mr. Padamsee, I later learned, took a personal interest in all work that came out of the public service advertising cell, which is for whom I had done the campaign I was presenting. He did not recognise me, and I didn’t remind him. He listened to my presentation, looked at the scribbles, and then proceeded to tell me what was wrong with it with it, and why the agency would not run it. Lintas later offered me a full-time job, so perhaps there was some hope for me after all.
I never got to work with Mr. Padamsee again (he retired from Lintas the year I started working there), but I wound up spending 10 years working in the ad business, and showed that campaign to several creative directors, telling them it was one Alyque had bombed.
He continued to stride tall, if a little stooped, in the city, with quotable quotes and pronouncements on a number of topics besides advertising and theatre. The media perpetuated the story that he was called God in both those worlds, because of his certainty he was always right, and while I never heard anyone actually call him that, I don’t think Mr. Padamsee ever made any effort to address that rumour.
Aside from his mark on advertising and theatre, he made one more impression on the city. When Mumbai’s centre of gravity began to shift, with businesses moving into the once-unfashionable precinct of Lower Parel, Mr. Padamsee was credited with first rebranding it. He called it Upper Worli. That name doesn’t have any official status, but you’ll find it on Google Maps.
