Bodhisatwa Dagupta is a Creative Director, Grey worldwide, Delhi, at the time this interview published.
Bodhisatwa, or Bodhi as he is fondly known in the advertising circus is an obsessive, compulsive writer. When he’s not writing ads for a target audience he hasn’t met, he’s writing the first line of books that he won’t write. And when he’s not writing that, he’s writing about irrelevant things that have no implication in the macrocosm of things. Bodhi hates long words. Like obituary. And when the time is ripe, he’ll write his own, thank you very much.
Why are you into advertising?
Strangely enough, because I like the word ‘fuck’. I’ll explain. When I was a kid, perhaps 6-7 years or so, I used to see these hot shot advertising executives waltz into my place to have meetings with my dad (who, because he was in PR) had to deal closely with them. They looked really cool – long cigarettes dangling dangerously from their lips, drinking at odd hours, and using the word ‘fuck’ freely. I wanted to be like that. I wanted to be cool. And so at the age of 7, I made up my mind that I’d like to be in advertising.
The reason I stayed in advertising, years later, inspite of finding out that contrary to popular beliefe, it is not cool at all, is simply because I don’t think I can do anything else.