There's colour, satire and good-old fashioned humour. Pratik Basu's take on the mad, ad world of Calcutta in the 1980s will strike a chord and ring a bell with all those who were a part of the jamboree, in their inebriated avatar or otherwise. Those who weren't can read the book
There's colour, satire and good-old fashioned humour. Pratik Basu's take on the mad, ad world of Calcutta in the 1980s will strike a chord and ring a bell with all those who were a part of the jamboree, in their inebriated avatar or otherwise. Those who weren't can read the book
Advertising and alcohol are joined by an ampersand and at the hip, as old-timers from the ad world will tell you. After having spent over three decades in sales and marketing, advertising and the entertainment media, Pratik Basu decided to tap into this vast repository of creative insanity into his latest release, The Arty Farty Party. 
Digging into this reserve, he waves his wand, effortlessly introducing us to a world of colourful characters and Bloody Mary-whetted evenings. A pretender to the throne, feisty women, impotent millionaires and part-time heroes -- they all promise to leave a lasting impression on the reader. THE GUIDE spoke to the author who is back to where his story unfurls, Calcutta (that is now Kolkata), after spending nineteen years
in Mumbai.
Is Mono Mitter a figment of your imagination or is he a collection of individuals whom you came across during your days? Likewise with the rest of the characters in the plot -- were they real-life characters from your days in the industry?
At the risk of confessing my creative inadequacy, I must admit that the protagonists of The Arty Farty Party, including Mono Mitter, were inspired by the crazy, idiosyncratic, individualistic and the 'you-can-love-me-or-hate-me-but-you-can't-ignore-me' type of people that populated the world of advertising in those days. To those unversed in their ways (which was most of the rest of the world), it was a mystery what they did, why they spent such long hours in office doing it, or why, like vampires, they preferred doing what they did in the night when the rest of the world was at home watching TV or fast asleep.
It was as much of a mystery what the strange language was that they communicated in, why they dressed the way they did, and who were the gods they worshipped and spoke about in hushed, reverential whispers. These funny (ha-ha, not peculiar) behavioural traits are reflected, either singly or collectively, in the dramatis personae of the book, but, for comedic effect, I have taken the creative license to exaggerate them to an extent where they bear only passing and coincidental resemblance to the original. And as far as the bizarre situations the characters find themselves in are concerned, they are wholly figments of my imagination, but, hopefully, befitting of the epithetu00a0-- "those advertising types"u00a0-- that people in the profession were known by.
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Why the idea to introduce God into the plot? Was it a conscious effort to turn an ad-world story on its head?
The gods referred to in the book were the gods of the advertising world (of that time), which very significantly reduced their sphere of influence as compared with God, the supernatural creator and overseer of the Universe, with a capital 'U'. But limited as their kingdom might have been, they still strode it like the Colossuses they were, neither short on divinity nor a following.
Was it tough or easy to work on the plot considering you were familiar with the typical landscape of the ad world?
Both. While a familiarity with the advertising landscape certainly made it easier to construct the characters, the difficulty lay in not getting too involved with the processes and practices of advertising, which is always a temptation for someone who's spent more than a decade in the profession. Like in my debut novel -- Clueless & Co. -- which was an irreverent and exaggerated story about the 'boxwallahs' of corporate Calcutta -- my purpose with The Arty Farty Party was to tell a story about the colourful people of advertising -- not advertising itself -- that, hopefully, will strike a chord with a larger audience, irrespective of whether it has any knowledge about, or interest in, advertising at all or not.
The Arty Farty Party, Pratik Basu, Amaryllis, Rs 295. Available at leading bookstores
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