It has always been difficult to ignore Prahlad Kakkar. Especially if you arrived in Bombay in the early 80s and heard some fascinating stories about the man even before you met him.

So Prahlad is this copywriter turned Film Maker who used to work with Shyam Benegal…So Prahlad is this mad Sardar who walked out of a marriage telling his ex-wife to ‘just keep the Marine Drive flat’…So Prahlad is the guy who (in most likelihood) will take your script and maul it into a film…So he is the guy clients have more faith in than the ad agencies that service them…

By some queer quirk of fate, the ad agency I was working with had put me up at the agency flat in Juhu…and that was about 15 yards from Prithvi Theatre where I would land up given half the chance…and if I was too late for a play, there was always the Cafe where, after I had met Prahlad officially at the agency…he would sometimes whip me up his special Irish Coffee.

Then he produced a film for a client and did so without our involvement, supervision whatever. We were called for the preview and we all landed up, long faced and quite frankly miffed with the fact that we were being shown a film along with the client…and that too, just as a courtesy.

The film was produced according to a script I had written but was a bit of a disaster in the making. The client didn’t like it and the agency hated it. And obviously I had to face some flack for the script…plus I had no idea why Prahlad had used this just returned from abroad Reddy model and why she said ‘choothpaste’ instead of toothpaste.

Of course I made my displeasure known…but the agency wasn’t listening and Prahlad just…(in his nonchalant way) said that if I didn’t like it, I could either lump it or the next time I could make the film myself.

While my affair with the audio visual media began with my previous agency…I think the final decision to convert from copywriter to film maker was taken only in response to Prahlad’s taunt. And for that I shall remain ever grateful to him.

In the meanwhile of course I met Mithali, a pretty Bengali girl who modeled for me…and then I discovered that she was friendly with Prahlad…and eventually they married…in my books any guy Mithali could fall in love with had to be a wonderful chap…and I already had that opinion about Prahlad anyway…in spite of my filmic differences of opinion with him.

I left Bombay shortly thereafter and I lost touch with the man for a few years until I met him once at Bombay Airport along with Dinaz and they were coming to Hyderabad for a Duck Shoot if you please.

Then I would bump into him at Western Outdoors where his able assistant Kinny would wait with bated breath for the explosion that was sure to follow after Prahlad had reviewed some film or the other…

A few years back I found that Prahlad had interests that went beyond films…he was running a Scuba Diving resort in the Lakshadweep called Lacadives…and he had started rolling his own cigars…The client who had found out about the cigars asked me if I could take him to Prahlad’s and I said yes…I could…

I warned him that I had lost touch with Prahlad…and hadn’t met him after he took a bunch of dogs to one of India’s Leading Advertising Agencies and locked down the agency till they paid him his dues…but the client was okay to meet any kind of screwball…

So we land up at Prahlad’s new flat to see his humidor and pick up a few cigars…he is in the middle of some ceremony…but he steps up to meet us and takes some time off to spend discussing cigars…then he casually introduces us to his neighbour who has dropped by for the pooja…saying…hey Vijay…this is Sachin…and my jaw drops before he can say Tendulkar…

But that’s Prahlad for you…a maverick by design fault…a truly wonderful human being…a sardar who couldn’t cut off his insanity…and perhaps the quintessential Mad, Mad, Mad, Ad Man…

It’s a pity I missed him at the Chanel 6 show at the Taj Deccan…but who knows…I might bump into him in the next reel.