Kanak Mehra, DDB Budapest

Coming from India, went to Miami Ad School Hamburg, and after spending some time in Duval Guillaume Brussels Kanak Mehra decided to go to Hungary for his second quarter away. Could his first week in Budapest be the start of a literary bestseller? Read it and find out for yourself.

He was still digesting tandoori chicken when a loud thud woke him up. The captain’s voice announced they had safely landed in Budapest. Baggage claimed, money changed, the exit wasn’t that hard to find. “God this feels like watching Saving Private Ryan”, he said to himself, driving from the airport to his new apartment. The cabbie found the humour in the comment funny, although not many are ticklish around him.

He was devouring tandoori chicken in New Delhi, twenty four hours ago. Meeting friends, spending time with family. Being in Budapest felt somewhat lonely. Like he really was single. He was and still is. He missed his mom. The apartment was just like in the pictures. Huge. The next morning was ponderous. As Sundays have the knack of being. Trains of thought left on a never ending journey on tracks he had laid out over the twenty seven years of his existence. Still, the cappuccino tasted good. Monday came as if somebody had changed the channel.

A very warm welcome awaited on the first day of work. It would be one of many first days, he realized. He said his name so many times to so many people, that it started to sound funny in his head. It was by accident that he stumbled upon a particular passage while researching guns, it hit him like facing an already firing, firing squad. It made him realize that nobody was perfect, that we were all human. And we do regrettable things, but further realized that regret is nothing but realizing the difference between right and wrong.

The British in WWI established a ‘secret’ War Propaganda Bureau. It employed some of the most prolific writers of the time; Conan Doyle, Arnold Bennett, John Masefield, Ford Madox Ford, William Archer, G. K. Chesterton, Sir Henry Newbolt, John Galsworthy, Thomas Hardy, Rudyard Kipling, Gilbert Parker, G. M. Trevelyan and H. G. Wells. These great writers wrote pamphlets and books promoting the government’s view of the war prompting thousands of men to join the British Army. Large numbers of these men were killed, including Conan Doyle’s son, Kingsley Conan Doyle. Rudyard Kipling also lost his only son as a result of this propaganda. His response was:

Common Form (1918)
If any question why we died.
Tell them, because our fathers lied.

He had plans to have a kid. He’d call him Jethro. Jethro’s father would be a writer, not quite the same league as Kipling, but a writer none the less. A writer that is a part of propaganda as well, writing pamphlets about how it is the ‘shit’ to spend thousands on plastic, when a hundred will feed a family for a month, including sending the little one to school. Sometimes he wonders, what difference would he make to the world. Yes, he would have worked on Amnesty International, lit a candle on HYPERLINK "http://www.lightamillioncandles.com" www.lightamillioncandles.com, supported animal rights movements, have his share of free postcards, worked day in and night out to find a message that will make the world stop global warming, quit smoking, feed all of Africa and half of Asia, free Guantanamo Bay prisoners and maybe eat once a day. That’s a selfless contribution right there.

Unless he has the keys to the cellblocks, he can’t do a thing and by the way no one is going to quit smoking either. He can’t change the world, but he can sell to it. And sell he bloody will. Make it a friggin’ artform. Go to school, study it, make it matter of life and death. Write until the ground shifts from under his CD’s feet. Fight over pencils at twenty seven. search for the internet a.k.a inspiration, lose complete touch with reality, look at billboards instead of the Taj Mahal. In other words, prove Oscar Wilde absolutely right, while totally losing sight of the message he wants to convey. Communication it seemed was not his cup of tea. Today might now have been his day. Tomorrow the sun would rise again, and if he is lucky shine a bit too.

Maybe when Jethro grows up, he will realize, his father wasn’t lying, he was only selling.