Babies On The Brain

Babies On The Brain
6th November 2005

Happy Diwali, Happy New Year, Id Mubarak to all. Belated happy birthday to the Nag, happy birthday in advance to Minty.

For the last month or so, all my friends have been asking me where I've been.

From Legs, who threatens to disown me and says she's given up on me as a friend; to my best friend, who meets me online to ask why I haven't been uploading my blog of late. From Minty, who wonders when our long overdue date will happen; to the Drunken Painting Poet who wants to know when we'll catch up at Mondy's.

Having finally grown tired of answering questions in quadruplicate, I now present to you my account of What I Have Been Doing For The Last Few Weeks.

I entered hell as a slave about two months ago, when I started working on a baby calendar for a client. What exactly did this imply? Well, for starters, I had to get into a mother's head.

Now, it may sound easy. Mothers love babies. That's all there is to it. Right? Wrong.

So there I was, desperately seeking to discover the mother within myself. Most men try to get in touch with their feminine sides. I have long surpassed that; indeed, I am in touch with my maternal side. I didn't even know I had one.

So I sat down to write copy describing every major milestone in a baby's life. Starting with the joy of birth, going on to imitation and ending with walking. Making every effort to capture the joy of motherhood.

So I'm finally done with copy. Twelve essays, one for each month. Then comes the hard part. Staring at baby pictures to match picture to copy. With a stubborn art director - Kiddo - and a creative director - Scary - who wants me to tackle it all. She threatens to come in at the last moment and change everything. Okay, then!

Then we present to client. Who trips. Asks for options - straw men, just to show her boss that we've worked hard. And things take off from there.

So there I am, doing Kiddo's work for her. Browsing through 2000 pictures in the client's image bank. Then sitting with a painful Kiddo to do a final selection.

Then we present again, final round. And it's approved. You'd think that was the end of it? Uh-huh. Scary makes good on her promise. She changes everything.

So we're sitting and hunting down images from stock libraries. The client has cut down the calendar to a six-month thingy. So six pieces of copy are thrown away.

Scary shows copy around. That was the best part. Everyone loves it. Married baby-fearing women suddenly tell their baby-fearing husbands that they want to have babies. Women tell me that I write like a husband who wants his wife to experience the joy of motherhood. Suspicious offers to buy me a round of drinks, because it's the best copy I've ever done. My client begins to refer to me as 'Mother'. As in, "Tell Mother I like the work."

I'm on cloud nine. Then Scary tells me to rewrite.

Aargh!!!!

Her logic - it's too long. I protest. I whine. I fume. No avail.

I do an edit. She hates it. I do a rewrite from scratch. She thinks it's too serious. Then I do another edit of the original. This passes muster.

Is that all? No. Problems arise with the image libraries, and are still being sorted. More on this as it happens.

And, somewhere before the rewrite, Scary briefs us on an international project for the same clients.
So we spend weeks exploring the mother-baby bond. We have to present three campaigns - three, when we're struggling to crack just one. What's worse - we have to write a book telling the rest of the world how to do advertising for that client. Seems like an ego boost, but believe me, it's slavery.

There go my weekends, my holidays. We're sitting in office till late almost daily, over weekends as well. By the time we're done, we've got three campaigns. After endless rounds of revisions with agency regional business director and agency worldwide creative director. And a very workable book.
Scary flies to Singapore for the client presentation. And comes back with more work.

Two campaigns are to go for research, only after tweaking. One campaign to be done no matter what - so we have to work out scripts. The book - rework!

There goes my week.

Send the two campaigns off after another weekend at work. Then start on the third. Goes up and down, up and down. The anal client bombs work, hysteria happens at Express Towers, the worst scripts ever are polished to imitate average standards, and sent. And approved.

The book? Well, there are more drafts than I can keep track of. Up-down, back-forth, write-rewrite. Until finally the work was completed last night and sent off for a Monday morning meeting.

Now to the nitty-gritties. The inside stories.

The story of me relaxing, thinking I'd cracked a campaign. Then my boss arrived, bombed everything, and we started again.

The story of me getting hysterical that same afternoon, yelling that I couldn't do it anymore. Scary and Carpenter (another creative director who was helping out) are laughing their asses off as I stalk up and down, muttering to myself and waving my hands in the air.

The story of lots of beer in office. Every time we cracked the work, we'd order beer. Then have the work bombed, and start from square one all over again...

The story of a day of rebellion. When Scary, Mister and I decided to bunk work and go drinking. And drank ourselves silly at Mondy's. Mister telling servicing that he was too drunk to check layouts.

The story of a horrible Diwali week. When the only holiday we got was Diwali, when we worked on New Year's, Bhau Bheej and Id.

The story of Scary going through a 45-minute teleconference with aforementioned anal client and anal regional business director, and storming out hysterical. Tearing at her already frizzly hair, eyes bulging, mouthing profanities, not knowing whether to laugh or to cry. Then saying, "I need beer and loud music NOW!!!" and dragging us to Mondy's.

The story of yesterday, where I was in office for 11 hours and worked only 2.5. When I lost it and cribbed loudly on the phone to Slappy (in Delhi). When I made puppy-dog eyes at Scary till she told me to f*** off and go home.

Then I went to Doc's uncle's place, to bring in the Nag's birthday. Drank wine, chatted, slept. Then went for the bartending workshop to celebrate it.

In the meanwhile, Groper left for Delhi for good, Slappy left for Delhi for Diwali, and my best friend came home to do her wedding shopping, for all of four days, and left today.

In the meanwhile, I eked out time to get a haircut. I also played a lot with my new phone, missed all my favourite shows on TV, and had all my friends thinking I'm dead.

In the meanwhile, I learnt all about being a father (theoretically, at least). I learnt all about babies. I looked at 5000 baby pictures. I started to watch my sperm count decrease. I started hating mothers and babies with a vengeance.

Scary's told me to take off tomorrow. So I'm going to pick up Slappy from the airport early morning, and then we'll do dinner as well.

Then, research results and post-presentation debrief will happen.

And the work will start again.

And my fate is sealed for another few weeks.