‘Theatre, advertising and social work domains will remain ever grateful to Gerson’

I was simply fortunate to have been an inconsequential summer trainee at Gerson Da Cunha’s Lintas. I landed up at Lintas in the summer of 1978 for a 10-week summer project.  Rags (Raghavan Srinivasan), George John and Atul Sharma occupied three of the 10-odd Godrej steel tables in a large room at the north east corner of 15^th floor of Express Towers. Rags was my summer training supervisor. My summer project of building a press plan optimizer was the brainchild of Shakti Maira and it had nothing to do with Gerson. And yet it was impossible to exist at Lintas of those days without being enveloped by Gerson’s vibrations.

Gerson would walk into the room and chat with every Account Executive multiple times during a single working day. He had a word of advice or a joke to crack or some observation to offer to each occupant in the room.

I completed my summer internship in June 1978 and was fortunate to get a pre-placement job offer by Lintas in January 1979 which was followed by an appointment letter signed by Gerson.

By the time I joined Lintas in June 1979, Gerson had already gone on a sabbatical to UNICEF to promote breast feeding in Brazil!! Alyque had become Acting Chief Executive. But it was hard to miss Gerson’s presence during initial years of Alyque’s Lintas.

There was Jaikrit Rawat, a Hindi copywriter who was spotted by Gerson while judging a competition at Xavier’s college for designing a press ad to promote adoption of orphan children. The competition was won by Jaikrit Rawat and Gerson made him an instant offer as a Hindi copywriter at Lintas – a species unheard of in those days. Because there were copywriters (naturally English copywriters!) and there were translators at language department but there were no Hindi copywriters.

I shared my cabin with the legendary Satyadev Dube who was brought to Lintas by Gerson.

Regardless of departments, no matter who you spoke to - B C Dutt of Admin, Helen Anchan of Media, Mubi Pasricha of Films or Gautam Rajadhyaksha of Photography and model coordination - each one had not one but multiple anecdotes about Gerson to tell you.

After leaving Lintas, three or four times that I ran into Gerson at NCPA for some concert or the other, Gerson was more interested in talking to my son and they had an enthralling conversation about intricacies of western and Indian flute or some other nuances of western classical music – much of which went over my head.

I will remember Gerson most for being a charming and caring human being. Theatre, advertising and social work domains will remain ever grateful to Gerson for identifying and nurturing many a talent in myriad ways, largely unknown to others.