The Delhi Chapter : Page 5

If anything, I always had all my facts in place.

I knew that before one could apply to any ad firm, one had to have something called a ‘Portfolio’.

Not a CV, no. A portfolio.

To use simple words, a bunch of campaigns that you worked on to show people how good / bad / ugly your creative skill-sets chiefly are.

In essence, a firm’s reason to hire you.

And to create a portfolio, one needed training at an ad firm.

To know the works.

How things are done.

How brands are built.

Campaigns are run.

Mostly, to know how the cookie crumbles.

In the big, bad world of Advertising.

Proverbially infested with drop-outs and back-benchers, screwers and joint-rollers, rebels and objectors, rock and porn likers, sleepers and rule-breakers, casanovas and bangers, drifters and try-outers, and a zillion and one (not-so-flattering) things.

Always seemed exceptionally amusing to me though.

From many many moons back.

So yes, when I was finally set on moving to ad, the first thought was to design my resume differently.

[ From the voluminous sea of appliers. ]

I mean, everyone would plug in a banal black and white word doc, peppered with their credentials and marks and blah.

But honestly, who wants to read that?

If I were a hirer, I wouldn’t, I thought.

So the CV had to be designed exceptionally. In the form of a comic strip or a magic book, maybe.

There was never a dearth of ideas.

But the only bummer was to find a designer who would design me a kickass CV and help me get by.

I mean really, when the person I was going to apply to couldn’t see my face or hear my voice, my CV actually was the only thing; that mirror which would reflect everything. All that I was truly made of.

So I knew this had to be done well.

So when I visited Bodhi’s (then mister stranger: Bodhisatwa Dasgupta’s) profile, I happened to find a link to his blog.

And as I opened it, it felt like a riot of creativity.

Splashes of colours, words, thoughts.

Illustrations, drawings, comic strips et al.

I must’ve leapt on my bed a couple of times to have found just the man I was looking for.

That genie who would help me design my CV.
Which I could turn in to ad firms around the country to help me land an internship.
And with any luck, thereafter, a job...