Obituary: Piyush Pandey was a ‘kindred soul’, recalls adman Prahlad Kakkar

As the world bid adieu to ad guru Piyush Pandey, Prahlad Kakkar pens an emotional tribute in a heartfelt obituary.

Ad guru Prahlad Kakkar and late Piyush Pandey have been rival and have been friends, and have grown up professionally into giving some of the most iconic advertisements. As the news of Piyush's demise on Friday surfaced, Prahlad pays his tribute and writes the obituary remembering the admaker.

Piyush Mishra (left) and the Prahlad Kakkar have been known each other for several years.

Prahlad Kakkar's tribute to Piyush Pandey

"It’s very sad losing Piyush, he was a kindred spirit and I remember speaking to him last two months ago. We had become really good friends. We laughed at the same things, people and at the same institutes and even lot of at ourselves. That was a very special bond which you don’t get usually in a lifetime. Piyush was one most amazing and original advertising professionals that I have ever known.

He came from a background that was so solid, so Indian that he changed the face of advertising totally from an English dreaming, English speaking profession and made it into Hindi and the vernacular because he believed that if you address the consumers in the language of their mother tongue then it would be far more effective than asking them to listen to a language which is a second language.

That’s something that you go down in history. That is what is immortalizing. Beyond that he did so many amazing campaigns, he changed the fortune of so many clients, he touched so many lives by training them, by supporting them and you know there’s so many creative people out there who have all been through Piyush’s tutelage. He touched everybody’s life, including mine, you know.

During the early days of our career, I remember that I used to to run into him when he was a Trainee Copywriter and he had ideas which other people wouldn’t buy. So he used to come quietly and sit in a little editing room on the same floor where my office was in the Everest Building. He used that machine to edit stuff and show people that it can also happen this way because you know when you write something on paper it’s very difficult to convince a client who doesn’t understand what you’re doing. So sometimes you have to actually go that extra mile and actually make it visually. He used to sit there and edit, and that’s when I had to meet him quite often, and that’s how we became friends because I had to believe in what he did because I realized that I was doing the same thing myself.

We used to hang out all the time because you went to a lot of parties to each other’s house. He launched my book for me for the Hindu. He reviewed it and we were very close because we basically, our camaraderie came from the fact that we laughed at ourselves and at the whole world, and we were very irreverent. I’m very irreverent.

He didn’t believe in anything that anything beyond reproach or improvement. We even worked as rivals because he was with Coke and I was doing Pepsi so we would laugh at each other and challenges each other. I will miss you Piyush, for your irreverence, your humour, your raucous laughter and the courage to stand up and fight for your work , and for your juniors! May you find many roads in your journey my kindred spirit."