Alyque Padamsee breathed his last on Saturday morning at Mumbai’s HN Reliance Hospital following prolonged illness. He was 90.
A theatre doyen, the brain behind some of the most iconic advertisement campaigns, the actor essaying the role of Mohammad Ali Jinnah in Richard Attenborough’s Gandhi and mentor to many in the creative field, Padamsee wore many a hats.
“He was one of the finest creative minds produced by this country. There are a few people from the world of advertising whose lives have straddled beyond advertising. Alyque’s did. He was into theatre, playing Jinnah, everywhere,” said Swapan Seth, the chief executive officer of Equus Advertising.
When the television industry was opening its doors in India, Padamsee ran advertisement campaigns that captured the mood and imagination of the country’s fledgling middle-class still more than a decade away from liberalisation.
He created memorable campaigns such as the bathing girl for Liril soap, Surf Excel’s Lalitaji, the Charlie Chaplin lookalike for shoeshine brand Cherry Blossom and Hamara Bajaj for Bajaj two-wheelers.
These are only a handful of the over 100 brand campaigns he had built as the chief executive officer of Lintas India, from 1980 to 1994.
He also coined the word “Unputdownable” for The Telegraph when the newspaper was launched in 1982.
In his autobiography A Double Life: My Exciting Years in Theatre and Advertising, Padamsee wrote: “Further kudos came to Lintas when we launched The Telegraph newspaper in Calcutta with a campaign that features a phrase that entered the language. Unputdownable.”
“Alyque was the person who coined it,” recalled Amitabha Datta, who was involved with the launch of The Telegraph.
“When The Telegraph was launched, the campaign was news comes to life. The newspaper those days were very staid, conservative. After a month of the launch, people were talking about the newspaper when Alyque came up with the ‘Unputdownable’. One ad had a man reading The Telegraph while having his breakfast, little realising the cup of tea was overflowing. Another had a man shaving while reading the paper while the lather flowed down. In another, a man reading The Telegraph in a bus stepped on a woman’s feet and despite her yells, continued to read the paper. That was the Unputdownable campaign,” he said.
He said Padamsee had also prepared an audio-visual on the 10th anniversary of the newspaper.
Born in a Khoja Muslim family in 1928, Padamsee’s first brush with stage was at the age of seven when he acted in his brother’s production, Merchant of Venice.
As a student, he led a double life between the stage and the cricket pitch, where he was a pace bowler. He had once missed a stage show of Richard III by Ebrahim Alkazi as he got detained on the cricket field.
In a career spanning over 60 years, he directed more than 70 plays and was known for his theatre productions like Evita, Jesus Christ Superstar and Tuglaq.
President Ram Nath Kovind said he was a “creative guru” and a “doyen” of the ad industry, while Prime Minister Narendra Modi remembered him as a “wonderful communicator”.
Actor Boman Irani said he owed his break to Padamsee.
“Saddened to hear of the passing of ad guru and theatre doyen Alyque Padamsee. He gave me my first break in theatre, like countless before and after me. Maverick. Unique. Uncompromising. There will never be another… RIP Alyque,” Boman tweeted.
