Culture In His Folds

Nagarkar’s long-necked grazing on the fields of literature, films, food and his gift for friendship.

- Manjula Padmanabhan

KIRAN Nagarkar lived his entire life like a bomb defuser with ten seconds to save the Universe... whilst watching his favourite films, reading his favourite books and meeting his favourite people in the same ten seconds.

He could never understand why the rest of us were so cavalier with time. He would say, in his low, always breathless voice, his enormous hooded eyes brimming with reproach, “Those of you who are healthy, who don’t have to live with constant pain, who don’t struggle to breathe, don’t you see how phenomenally lucky you are?” It would be many years before I understood that he was dead serious.

I don’t remember when we met. Kiran was one of the gurus of the advertising world in that era maybe forty years ago. I was friends with Tulsi Vatsal, his life-partner. Plus, he had been a mentor to two other friends of mine, both copywriters. I remember being surprised by his appearance. In his voluminous white pajamas and fine handloom kurta, with his close-cropped hair and narrow head atop a tall lanky frame, he was the antithesis of the image of the hard-drinking, cigarette-toting ad-man.