Book review: When a master copywriter finds his voice in poetry

Bobby Pawar is one of the finest English copywriters in the business of advertising. Over a career spanning more than three decades, he has worked with some of the best creative agencies in India, held leadership positions, managed and mentored several creative teams, and worked on brands that have won awards both in India and globally.

But awards and advertising credentials tell only part of the Bobby Pawar story.

What has always distinguished Bobby is his writing. He has a style that is unmistakably his own—never taking the obvious route, always looking for a different way of expressing an idea, and often finding a thought or turn of phrase that makes you stop and think. His writing has always stood apart in the world of advertising and communication.

It is therefore fascinating to discover that the same qualities find a different expression in his poetry.

His book, An Empty Heart Is a Loaded Gun, gives us a glimpse into the mind of the man behind the copywriter. The poems take us through nostalgia, relationships, love, loss, anxiety, social change, humour and the everyday experiences that most of us pass by without noticing.

The poems featured here are only a few representations from the collection, but they give us a sense of the remarkable range of Bobby's writing and the distinctive voice that runs through the book.

Take Bandra 1983, for instance. It is much more than a poem about a place. Through memories of old bungalows, Chimbai, roadside kebabs, golawallas, Sunday morning idli sellers and the colourful language of friendships, Bobby recreates a Bandra that belongs to another era. You can almost hear, smell and see the neighbourhood of his younger days. But beneath the nostalgia lies something more personal: the realisation that perhaps it is not only Bandra that has changed. Time may have changed the poet as well.

In Mindfulness, Bobby takes a familiar idea and gives it an unexpected twist. The thought is simple, almost playful, yet it leaves you reflecting on how carefully we might walk through life if we knew that even the smallest creature could be affected by our actions. It is a perfect example of Bobby's ability to make a few words carry a much larger thought.

Tide is another example of his economy. Few words, but a thought that stays with you. The rising tide becomes a metaphor for the power of one person's rise to lift others along with them. It is simple, memorable and almost has the quality of a great advertising line.

Then there is Revellion, where Bobby finds his rebellion in the ordinary things of life. He celebrates the small pleasures we often overlook—the feel of a razor, the whistle of a pressure cooker, the aroma of freshly cut grass, the warmth of another person's breath. There is humour in it, but also a gentle philosophy: perhaps life is richer when we stop judging its gifts by the size of the boxes they come in.

An Ode to Women Who Fight for Change brings out Bobby's sharper, more contemporary voice. Using the imagery of a cauldron, a witch and the flames of social-media outrage, he creates a powerful metaphor for women who challenge convention. The woman they try to silence becomes a wildfire, from which a million torches are lit. It is both witty and powerful.

And then we encounter a more vulnerable Bobby in My Sky. Here, the external world becomes a mirror of the internal one. The grey sky, the closed curtains, anxiety, medication and questions about destiny gradually merge into one emotional landscape. And then comes the wonderfully unexpected reversal: perhaps the sky is gloomy because the poet is. It is a deeply personal thought expressed with remarkable simplicity.

These are only glimpses of what the collection offers. Other poems explore break-ups, fatherhood, the death of a father, violence, relationships and memories of another time. Each reveals a different facet of Bobby and his ability to look at familiar experiences from an unfamiliar angle.

Dr A. J. Thomas, poet and former editor of Indian Literature, captures this quality beautifully when he writes that Bobby “writes poetry with beguiling ease” while presenting “an entire experience with a masterly finesse.” He points to poems such as Some Break-ups Are Beautiful, My Daughter, the elegy on his father, An Empty Heart Is a Loaded Gun and Bandra 1983 as examples of the range and depth of the collection.

And perhaps that is what makes Bobby Pawar's poetry so interesting.

His advertising career taught him the power of an idea. His poetry reveals the person behind those ideas.

He notices what others might overlook—a changing neighbourhood, a street vendor's call, an ordinary pleasure, a difficult relationship, a woman's rebellion, a grey sky, a childhood memory. And then he does what Bobby has always done best: he finds a different way of looking at it.

That is what made him such a distinctive advertising writer. And it is what makes him an engaging poet.

Whether he is writing a headline for a brand or a poem about life, Bobby seems to follow the same creative instinct: don't say what everyone else is saying. Find the thought beneath the obvious thought—and express it in a way that makes people pause.

An Empty Heart Is a Loaded Gun is therefore more than a collection of poems. It is a window into the mind of a creative man who has spent a lifetime observing the world around him.

Sometimes he makes us smile. Sometimes he makes us nostalgic. Sometimes he makes us uncomfortable. And sometimes, quite unexpectedly, he makes us look at ourselves.

For a man who has spent more than three decades making words work for brands, it is fitting that Bobby Pawar has now made words work for something much more personal: himself.

And perhaps that is the greatest pleasure of discovering Bobby the poet—you realise that the man who spent a lifetime writing for others has finally given us a chance to read what he writes for himself.