Voice

Voice

Again a new project…that’s exactly how I reacted yesterday, when my boss entrusted me with this new project.

Not that I hate my job, yet I have lost the tenacity that I had years back when I had joined the advertising industry as a publicity designer. At that time I felt that this was the job for me, because everyday there were fresh new projects, new creative ideas beckoning, new challenge. But over the years I today find, even the ‘newness’ of my job boring!

But still got stick to this job that brought me so much name and fame. In this kind of a job there is just immense pressure on us, every day. And every time truly its tough to conjure up an original idea good enough to fetch international awards. Besides the bottom line of our job is to strike a chord with the masses. When I was this fresher coming from a middle class background, it wasn’t a problem to think what people ‘like me’ would find interesting. But with time as I started climbing the ladder of both success and fame, I lost touch with the ordinariness in me…as well as my society. Today sitting in the couch of a fully furnished flat in the twenty-third story of a complex in Bandra, I find it tough to relate to the thoughts of the potato chips seller in the shores of Bombay! But that’s my job.

In these situations when I really do not know what to do…I go diary searching! My diary that captured the time of my life when I was ‘no one’, just another struggler in the city of dreams! That diary has a ‘me’…that’s ordinary, and has other men who were good, bad, interesting, bores…. nothing extra out of the world about them…yet that’s were I get my ideas. It has happened several times before.

This is a different ad campaign that I need to put up. It is not about selling a product, but about selling something that doesn’t have a market in India. It is a documentary on terminally ill patients. The young multiplex goers are not interested in them, leave alone commoners…but that’s the challenge. The people dismiss documentaries as ‘boring things meant for intellectual people’, but all that does not really deter fresh graduates from film schools in making them or roping in good-hearted producers to support them. My problem starts when I have to publicise things like these! I mean what could I do…what script on a topic as morose as ‘terminally ill patients’!!

I was turning the leafs of the diary finding nothing relevant. In fact I was getting annoyed to see that page after page, in those days I have written things that today do not have a ‘resale’ value!

Why I did not turn off this particular page I do not really know. I somehow started reading it. To quote it, it said-

‘Date: 25th August 1999

Dear diary,

'I do not know what to write today. In fact I m really confused. Two years back at this time I was in shillong shooting for this particular soft drink ad. No wonder we had big stars with us. It was a wet evening, and a lazy one too and after shooting we all had retired into our own rooms.

'At about 7.30 p.m. suddenly someone knocked the door of my room. I opened it thinking it would be someone from the unit.

But to my surprise it was this fat, stout child staring vacantly into my eyes. I had never met a child like her. Though she had nothing special about her, yet her stare was so much different and strange. I was thinking what to do when a middle-aged lady…her mother came in-

“oh…she’s come here all alone.”

The lady was the owner of the hotel we were staying in.

“ Yeah she has!” I said and smiled though I was still not clear why she has come or what is the context. The girl was still vacant as before.

“Niyati…Niyati”, her mother called and suddenly she jerked herself, then looking upto me smiled innocently.”

“ Actually she is a big fan of the actor you have for this advertisement and wants his autograph!”

'Familiar with the tantrums stars put up, I sad-“ okay I will try, but I am not sure…actually it all depends on his mood.”

Her mother smiled and calmly said-“ I do not think he will say ‘no’ to her. You see she suffers from Down’s syndrome.”

'For a moment I was taken aback. Such a young girl and such a heavy disease! I was quite confused. I took her up to the actor; she got the autograph but more than all that we became ‘friends’.

'Though she was mentally retarded yet that thing never came in between our friendship. Later even after the shooting got all over and I returned back to town, I would call her up, keep in touch. I even wrote letters to her, which her mother read out to her. She had an amazing smile…and strangely enough could dance really well!!! Though she responded a little late to the rhythm!

'Last November I got this call from her mother that informed that she expired. I broke completely. Even I was pretty young at that time, so it was like a huge shock. I had seen her parents, had known her, somewhere down the line I must I seen my own child in her…or the childish part of myself, go knows! I had never thought I would ever be able to get over her, whenever I saw any child I would remember her and would be driven to spell of memories and tears!

'But strange as it may sound it took just a few months to forget her, and I don’t know hen I got over all that. You see its not even a year yet, and I do not feel her presence in my life any more. It was just that today I was supposed to get involved in a project with an NGO for children, that I remembered her.

'I was so much surprised at my own self. And life as a whole…so many people come into our lives, they leave us crying when they bid adieu …but then the wind and the rain comes to cover their footprints and soon there is no sign that they were there! The same will happen with me someday, perhaps in an unknown diary, some unknown writer will pen me alike and then seldom turn to the written out pages…may be!'

The write-up ended on that scary note! Yes indeed today even the name ‘Niyati’ does not ring a bell t my heart, but one day she was there…true! But still as I recollect one sweet thought crosses my mind, after all I cared…the little time or moments I spent with her, I did not neglect her. I cared…yes I did! So who knows might be her parents, as well as her soul too finds me a sweetheart…who knows I may one day live through the love I had showered on her…and her love that she gifted me with.

I got the voice for the campaign, and in it I found the voice of life. Jotted down the script. It floored my boss, as well as the producers…but more importantly I had got new reason to live. The script of the campaign said-

“Hello, I am Life.

Here you live…and here you have a chance.

Do not neglect the bad, the ugly, and the ill…

You too will have to die one day without leaving a thing…but make your mark,

To the terminally ill patients- show that you care,

Your life could be meant for nothing better.

Do something so that when you people perish I do not say ever-

The wind and the rain covered their footprints and soon there was no sign that they were there!”

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if u can please suggest a better title!!