Piyush Pandey straddled cricket cool and desi swag in resurgent India: Madhavan Narayanan

What can you say about a man about whom much is already known in a world where faces matter, slogans travel and branding is the very essence of it all? Piyush Pandey as an advertising titan is someone who I have never met but have childhood memories of. He used to hang out with fellow cricketers at a time when cricket was my life and neigbourhood parks were favourite places.

I remember him as a cheerful senior when we were playing gully cricket in the parks of Lutyens’ Delhi. His smile and casual sideways glance were something that registered because he played cricket for St Stephen’s College when it was a formidable team. My residential area actually had at least two Ranji Trophy players, and he was seen with them. Piyush Indranarain Pandey himself played Ranji Trophy for Rajasthan and also kept wickets, informs ESPNCricinfo.

But cricket, that English game that went with the language of those brought that sport to India, is not what Pandey became famous for. I would remember him as the man who made Indian languages and middle-class homeliness cool in a world steeped in post-colonial habits. He was the perfect counterpoint for Alyque Padamsee of Lintas, the grand old man of Indian advertising, somewhat better known to the larger world as an English theatre man.

“Kyunki Har Ghar Kuch Kahta Hai,” is what made one sit up when Pandey made Asian Paints as Bharatiya as desi ghee and Diwali sweets. “Because every home says something” strikes subliminally in the minds of most people, as every visit to every home by every person creates a lasting impression, often unconscious. Pandey excelled in ethnifying an international attitude while also  lifting one’s unconscious recollections into the conscious, bringing forth an “Aha” kind of epiphany in the hearts (not just minds) of the consumer.

Brands like Fevicol, Cadbury’s and of course, Narendra Modi himself, are part of the folklore of Piyush Pandey, whose trademark moustache should have conveyed to me early in life that here was a man who could show off elegantly – like a stylish wrist stroke on the cricket field.

I would put him alongside Kapil Dev as a quintessential 1980s phenomenon -excelling in something that colonialism brought to India, but with a chutzpah that made being desi cool. Those who are currently watching every kind of Indian advertisement steeped in bilingualism, earthy jargon, dialects and rustic visuals will find it hard to imagine the context in which Pandey arrived (possibly alongside predecessor Kamlesh Pandey and later R. Balki and Prasoon Joshi).  The other Pandey, elder to Piyush by a few years, was much talked about as a new-age trailblazer. The elder Pandey was the man who gave Kapil Dev’s face the famous line, “Palmolive da jawab nahi” before becoming better known as the man who co-wrote the screenplay of Rang De Basanti.

Piyush Pandey took off (as I see it) from where Kamlesh left off, and helped switch India’s advertising industry from jackets and neckties to a comfortable kurta-pyjama look. It was just what the doctor ordered for India’s emerging middle class. One never knows whether it is creativity shapes the market or vice-versa. Perhaps it is a bit of both. It takes a wizard to turn unconscious aspirations into the epiphany of a brand. Piyush Pandey fitted that brief perfectly.

One would have expected him to write lyrics or scripts or direct movies, much like his peers such as Kamlesh Pandey, Prasoon Joshi and R. Balki. He never did that, though a couple of screen cameos made him register a passing presence. His brother Prasoon Pandey became a movie director, and am not sure how much of Piyush was in that or not.

All I can say is that the man who played cricket and breezed into big-ticket branding for the teeming millions of India is the stuff of legends who deserves a biopic.

(The writer is a senior journalist who has covered business and advertising among other subjects. He has worked for The Economic Times, Business Standard, Hindustan Times and Reuters. He tweets as @maversity)