How the Internet Changed the Way I Dress

My hot pink gypsy skirt and brightly coloured feather earrings drove my first advertising agency to hide me away in the old tea room. I took advantage of that by suspending a cardboard pyramid from the shadeless light hanging over my head. I had experimented long with mummifying things like tomatoes and meat under pyramids, and I knew they were great for creativity too. One day they'd wake up to the fact that it didn't matter how I looked because I wrote such fantastic copy.

The loving, wet licks of my dogs, Rasputin of the white whiskers and beard, Rapunzel, Jigsaw and Bismarckee turned many a pair of feather earrings into a wet bird that I could never wear again, but I continued to buy them.

When the movie`10' starring Bo Derek came to town, I got my hair done up in beads. I was also the first punk in the city with hair that stood up upon my head and was streaked with orange. Why, I was even the `Celebrity' magazine punk cover girl.

I could carry off the punk look, as everyone said. The irate art director covered up the mirrors on the cupboard in the Copy Room with thick brown paper. He thought I peered into them too often. You would have peered into them too since they were right behind the Copy Chief's desk when you sat across from her. And you did sit across from the Copy Chief often.

But that didn't stop me from cutting a flap into the paper and peering at myself when the art director wasn't looking. The others would only giggle when I did that. Eight years in that agency and awards too, but they didn't even give me the designation of `Senior Copywriter'.

My clothes and my years as a fashion model proved to be a hurdle I had to jump over when looking for a better job. Despite my awards and experience, no one seemed to take me seriously enough as a writer. To get into my next agency where I only spent over a year, I had to write two copy tests instead of one.

"They're the most brilliant copy tests they've ever seen," the Copy Chief there told me. And then the creative head happened to read a short story I had written for the Deccan Herald which made her say, "We're sitting on a gold mine".

I was finally on. "If you want to get promoted, you'll have to start wearing sarees and salwars," said Copy Chief to me. But of course, I was not going to wear a façade. I knew I looked good in a saree, but I was wary of stepping upon the pleats as I walked and then what?

Besides, I felt like someone else in a saree.
It was in this agency that I was told I had exceptional direct mail writing skills. I decided to specialise in this area and soon had glorious visions of working at Ogilvy & Mather Direct, and so, working for the legend of advertising himself - David Ogilvy. I envied those who were privileged enough to work for him, no matter how far away they happened to be from his chateau in France.

But my interviewers wondered whether I would fit into the Ogilvy & Mather `culture'. I wanted to create my own and so I sent them three mailers, revealing my identity in the third. These had headlines like "I knew you'd pick this up" and "Now that you have found me. . ." I was told I'd made history with that copy test.

I went on to make more history in Ogilvy & Mather Direct where I worked for 11 years, out of which, 10 years were as consultant. I wanted more time for my novels. They didn't halve my salary for half a day's work. My great hero in advertising, the brilliant and difficult to please R. Sridhar knew that I could do the same amount of work in half the time.

Designations didn't matter any more. I went on to win the prestigious David Ogilvy Award for Creative Excellence which came with a personal certificate signed by the great man himself and a cash award and a champagne bash where Sridhar spoke of how he'd been worried that I wouldn't fit in, and how I had created my own culture and brought in `fresh thinking' and `sparkling' writing.

When I finally left Ogilvy & Mather Direct, I became Creative Director in Corporate Voice where I also headed Corvo Draft Direct. Still as consultant. A year there and my mailer for Campari made news in the Times of India under the heading -`Cool Cat of Copy'.

Then it was Wunderman as Creative Director, and of this, the less said, the better. Let me just say that I no longer had a hero like Sridhar to look up to who would respect me for my work and give me my creative freedom.

So after a couple of months in Wunderman, I left. My time as Creative Director had been the worst phase of my career. I believe my huge salary and flexi hours, along with the fact that I was trying to teach others about direct mail writing, incited a whole lot of envy. Money certainly wasn't everything.

Next it was The Asian Age newspaper and I still coloured my hair and dressed according to my whims. My motto remained: "Never let your success get in the way of the way you look".

Nine years later, I realize I had it all back to front. I have been freelancing for a long time now, and loving it. No more battling traffic snarls and pollution. All my work happens through the internet. No more lectures about toning down my style of dressing at work. Now I lounge around in faded jeans. The Internet has liberated me.