Suketu and the new creative team would comprise the core group I would be working with over the next couple of months for developing the new advertising film for the Bright Biscuits launch. Suketu had, as always, worked on putting together a new creative team with single-minded dedication, and got us some of the best and brightest young minds at Blue Strawberry.

We were scheduled to meet them today along with Shiv and brief them on the Bright Biscuits project. Deciding to grab a cup of tea before the meeting started, I made my way towards the coffee point where a small group of the Dinky Chips guys had congregated and seemed to be listening in rapt attention to someone. As I neared the group I spotted the latest heartbreaker who had jumped on to the Dinky Chips wagon. Dinky Chips had been blessed with a strikingly good-looking all-male creative team—not of much use to them since the brand team comprised only straight guys, but several women in our office would have been only too happy to trade places with them.

But the latest addition to the creative team, Yudi, made even the others pale in comparison. With his tall, chiselled frame, intense brown eyes and slightly long, wavy hair he could have easily passed off for one of the hunky models that graced the ads of Sinful Swirls, GF’s premium ice-cream brand. In fact, I’d heard that Priyanka, the glamorous assistant brand manager on Sinful Swirls, had some designs pretty much along those lines, but Yudi wasn’t interested. After all, he had a creative legacy to match his drop-dead gorgeous looks. At twenty-seven, Yudi was being heralded as one of the brightest finds of the ad world and his rapid ascent in Blue Strawberry bore testimony to this. I had read about Yudi’s work long before he had first made an appearance at GF. His work for Speedo Bikes, the client he used to work with before GF, had won several awards nationally and had even made the nominations at a prestigious international ad festival.

I was now within earshot of Yudi and his admiring audience, and from the few snatches of conversation I could hear, it became apparent that a new script for Dinky Chips was being discussed.

‘The protagonist I have in mind is a typical small-town girl,’ Yudi was saying confidently. ‘Someone from, say, a Muzaffarnagar or a Meerut. You know—the Balle Balle, Amritsar to LA types. Except that, in this case it’s more like Meerut to Mumbai.’ He paused as the little clique around him tinkled with laughter. I could feel my hackles rising and the stirrings of my old friend, the angry hot flush, as I heard his words. What did this guy think of himself anyway? Just because he was some city slicker, hotshot young turk, didn’t mean he could go around insulting the other seventy per cent of India’s population!

‘So she lands in Mumbai and is agape at what she sees around her,’ Yudi went on. ‘Try to imagine her gaping like a goldfish as she sees the city for the first time…’