Nalesh Patil: teacher, friend, partner, genius
Genius: ORIGIN late Middle English: from Latin, ‘attendant spirit present from one's birth, innate ability or inclination,’ from the root of gignere ‘beget’. The original sense ‘spirit attendant on a person’ gave rise to a sense of ‘a person's characteristic disposition’ (late 16th century), which led to a sense ‘a person's natural ability’, and finally ‘exceptional natural ability’ (mid 17th century).
If after my birth in a dim half-room in Khotachi Wadi in Girgaum, Mumbai, an astrologer had prophesied that I would have the privilege of working with the finest creative minds in India, my father would have dismissed it as an inflated advertising claim.
But look now, just look, at the list of those who I got to work with…despite my own modest credentials. The trait common to all of them? Their creativity is/was too abundant to be restricted to the advertising field. It overflowed and made them experiment and master other arts.
One was Kersy Katrak, the maverick who created ad agency MCM that created a dozen other creative hotshot agencies. His other life included English theatre and time in Mirtola, Almora in a self-sustaining ashram. (Yes, he took me with him to meet the guru, Madhav Ashish!) Alyque Padamsee, creator of India’s best advertising films, of one of the best known agencies (Lintas) and Broadway-style theatre.
Arun Kolatkar, who wrote Commonwealth Award-winning poetry in English and Marathi and visualised some of the greatest campaigns in his time.
We spent more time discussing science fiction and Marathi folk art than campaigns.
Prashant Godbole, the ever-smiling art director, now owner of his own agency; his other life comprises global award-winning black and white photography (check out his page on Facebook).
Rahul D’Cunha, writer of Amul campaigns and the most original English plays in India.
Amer Jaleel and Narendra Yadav, the team that could find simple, elegant solutions to the most complex communication tasks. Narendra is now a famous installation artist and Amer is creating Mullen Lowe from scratch.
The list goes on: Rajeev ‘Mr CopySmith’ Badve, Ashok ‘DigiThinker’ Karnik, Arun ‘the Egoless’ Amberkar …
But.
It was only when I started chlorophyll in 1999 and met Nalesh Patil (along with his partner of 18 years, Gangadharan Menon), did I encounter true genius.
Nalesh learnt the dignity of labour when he was very young, by selling vada pav and bhaji pav on the mean streets of Mumbai.
It created within him a brand of individualism that was unshakeable.
He applied the idea of dignity of labour to creativity. “If I am in the commercial art business, solving communication problems, let me solve them in as many ways as possible.”
So in Clarion advertising, he kept an alarm clock on his table and asked the executives who briefed him how many ideas they needed in how much time.
This was the exact opposite of the creative ‘fashion’ in his time: ideas need time, would plead creative teams, through a haze of alcohol and grass, come back next week.
Ideas don’t need time, execution does.
A baby is conceived in a moment of orgasm, but it needs nine months in a warm womb to become a reality, was Nalesh’s reply.
When we started chlorophyll, we needed to ensure we lived up to our own brand beliefs, if we were to become brand consultants.
So we said, we would never make logos because they represent a wasted opportunity for brand communication.
We would create ideantities™. Instead of a meaningless squiggle with reams of pseudo-explanations of colour and shape we would create one-second ads.
Easy to announce, hard to act upon. Thankfully, we had Nalesh on our side. Between 1999 and 2016, he created not one, not ten, but over 50 ideantities™!
Each crisper than the other, each a micro-second mind-stopper.
Come, check out for yourself.
The letter L combined with Lord Ganesh for a hospitality brand talking about great beginnings.
A ball-bearing company transitioning to a flexible solutions company
An ambigram for a stock market catering equally to all stakeholders.
Two halves forming a whole for an engineering brand believing in relationships. The world’s oldest brand (1,400 years!) with a welcoming tikka and the family emblem of the Sun combined.
While this prodigious output in itself would buy Nalesh an entry ticket to the Hall of Fame, he actually had two other innate talents, unmatched by anyone else I know.
He was the most celebrated nature poet in Maharashtra. He was known for imagery as exquisitely filigreed as a leaf preserved in a book, but also for a powerful gnarled voice, much like the trunks of the trees he alluded to. Nalesh sang at over 120 locations in Maharashtra.
I am sure someone somewhere has a recording that you can access one day, and enjoy the waterfall of sound. Here are translations that I have struggled with because the Marathi versions are perfectly metered.
“As I searched for trees
whose shadows
I could hoard
Darkness whispered
“Meet me at dusk
I’ll sew them all together
and gift you
the entire blanket of the night.”
Or
“Go then
etch out the
alphabet of meaning
on
the blank sheet
of the day”
Part of the Standard Operating Procedure in chlorophyll is ‘taking your job seriously, not taking yourself seriously.’ People who wander into chlorophyll without living up to this dictum often leave by themselves.
Nalesh epitomised this SOP.
To him, humour was an island where nothing was sacred.
He created puns, jokes and new languages about assignments, clients, relatives, and most importantly, himself. His fear of dogs, his love of Old Monk, his passion for the monsoon (‘the only dynamic season’), his gesture of planting one tree on his birthday … all of these were allowed to become grist for the laughter mill.
If he was reading this, he would probably dismiss the entire article, as he dismissed the importance of awards. “You know why I would never get nominated for the Nobel? They know I would turn it down.”
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Kiran Khalap is co-founder & managing director, chlorophyll brand & communications consultancy