SamarjitBhattacharya.com - best search input for Samarjit Bhattacharya.
With that makeshift search solve - I’m just not that famous and neither is my work and a gent with my name has gotten a lot more press as a bio-chemical engineer, let us move forward bracingly with my mini-bio.
I’ve timed; this is not a three-minute read.
Started out an intern at Trikaya Grey’s Calcutta office in 1998, working on Usha Martin Telekom and The Asian Age. After writing for them a catalogue on crystal and bone china, on spec, Euro RSCG’s city chapter hired me.
Three and a half years on, goodbyes were said at this rambunctious outpost of the then Euro RSCG Group of Companies. One cannot begrudge the place its charms; it certainly had a line in raging and revelry. Perhaps unwittingly, I had been preparing all the while for a Masters in Mass Communications at Virginia Commonwealth University’s Adcenter, now its BrandCenter.
Graduating in 2003, I had one freelance gig seven months later with Ground Zero, then based in tony Manhattan Beach, California. I’d like to frame the tranche of time that passed between then and 2007 under one broad header - ‘picaresque adventures’.
My first stint at Wieden + Kennedy, New Delhi lasted three months, commencing March 2008. Then spent roughly three years at a couple of WPP group companies. My second consultancy engagement with Wieden India ran five years from March in 2013 to the February of 2018. My third freelance skirmish in the same company started on April 1, 2019 and ended on September 30 of the same year. Go Wieden! Go Wieden Go!
With the passage of time, the comms. industry, in the digi-dizzy age, is now as intense as pond life. Is there a picture that sums it all up eloquently - the strife, the posturing, the jockeying for attention, the quest for tawdry entertainments, delivered for a dime?
My money is on Johann Zoffany’s portrait of Asaf-ud-daulah’s court, entitled “Colonel Mordaunt’s Cock Match”. Much like today’s meeting rooms, virtual or physical, the scene is rife with opinion, as florid a grudgefest as any and one gets the sense that no one’s going home a winner with a chicken dinner from this day-long joust.
Yet every square inch yields a pertinent ad age story. Observe the compromised youth swaddled in pink behind the Nawab. That’s the third party cookie, freshly fallen. Who might the many jungle fowl represent? Search engine marketing tools, perhaps. Digital budget handlers - more likely. Freelance buccaneers shooting the shit? Yes Sirree Bob. Production companies? Indubitably. Interns? Oh heck yes. The statuesque white couch - longest serving employee in many a boutique shop - is also here, playing its stalwart supporting role.
Now observe, splayed across the Nawab’s canopy, the multitude of men in tights. Each adroit - one eye on opportunity, the other on recouping arrears, each convincingly composed yet also, and palpably - fast losing their shit. These may be today’s many hard-pressed Vice Presidents of Something or the Other, Creative Directors transitioning, or less momentously, transitioning to in-house roles, and in the majority “Associates” and “Strategists” and “Creatives” at the Zuck Fuck Show - the only show in town.
Finally let us for a moment dwell on the central figure, Asaf-ud-Daulah. One may argue he appears diffident, or callous, or to be placing a bet or even over-breakfasted but somewhat sanguine about his prospects and above it all. And from within the gossamer folds of his pyjama you may discern a considerable level of interest. And with some persuasion it could well be pointed your way.
