Mumbai Calling

Several months ago, before the craziness of RPA's defense of the Honda account, I received a phone call from Sushil Banka, a partner at Eggfirst Advertising in Mumbai. He is a very pleasant man who speaks perfect English and is quite fluent in the language of American advertising.

That is, he knows good work and the names of the agencies, and the people, who did it.

One of his current clients is Tata Motors, who now own Jaguar automobiles. In viewing the historical reel of past Jaguar advertising, Suhil discovered the London Calling Sales Event. He also noticed that I was listed as the Creative Director on the credits, this despite the fact that the concept was sold to Jaguar before I had even started at Y&R.

Suhil was not interested in the details. Nor did he care. He wanted to speak to the mastermind behind what he called, "this advertising masterpiece."

And so began the courtship across the international dateline that included emails, numerous skypes and a whirlwind 3-day stay at the Leela Mumbai Hotel -- they need to back off on the starch with the bedsheets.

To make a long story short, something I've rarely done on this blog, we are packing our bags and trying to figure out how to fly the dog 8,000 miles across the globe.

Am I nervous? Of course I'm nervous.

But I'm also excited. It's a whole new adventure. I'm going to be swimming in rupees. And I love Indian food. Particularly Indian beer and it's extremely high alcohol content.

Naturally, this means an end to roundseventeen. I didn't think it would end this way, but life is funny that way.  I want to thank you for your support, your readership and the many, many emails telling me how much you have enjoyed reading my musings.

For any of you might be interested, I will report on my progress via Facebook. My official start day in India will be June 3rd. Which for you will be June 2nd.

It's always important to know what day it is.