The Mad Ad Years, India's first advertising fiction, was penned during the COVID-induced lockdown making it the world’s first WhatsApp novel as the co-authors Tapas Gupta from Delhi and Aryani Banerjee from Kolkata exchanged about 1.5 lakh words on the messaging platform. Launched in 2021, The Mad Ad Years has sold more than a thousand copies and is vying to transform the book into a web series.
The novel highlights the ‘other side’ of advertising veterans and legends that had been kept under the carpet for decades, and uncovers the scandals, exploitations, drug abuse, adultery, blackmailing, back-stabbing, and nepotism that exist in the real world of advertising, through the eyes of the protagonist Prashant Gupta, a veteran advertising professional who has worked in some of the largest agencies in the country for nearly forty-five years, and presently owns a large, reputed agency.
'The Mad Ad Years' is available on Amazon
Author Aryani Banerjee and veteran advertising professional Tapas Gupta share with My Kolkata the story behind The Mad Ad Years and its journey.
Tell us about The Mad Ad Years
Aryani: The Mad Ad Years (released in 2021) is India’s first advertising fiction that covers over four decades of the changing landscape of the ad world. The backdrop of the book revolves around the top advertising agencies in India spanning four-and-a-half decades. It paints a fictional form, the scandals and exploitations that exist in the real world of advertising through the eyes of the protagonist, who has worked in some of the largest agencies in the country for nearly forty-five years.
Tapas: The story actually revolves around Prashant Gupta’s journey from being a 22-year-old simple graduate from a traditional joint family in Kolkata. In 1976, he accidentally gets a job as a management trainee in India’s most glamorous and second-largest agency. From rubbing shoulders with business tycoons and famous industrialists to witnessing dramatic and salacious incidents and being directly and indirectly involved in many instances that changed Indian advertising forever, and becoming the owner of a hundred-crore agency later in his life—Gupta has experienced and witnessed it all. The journey is tangy, wild, and bittersweet. The Mad Ad Years is not just a book but an irresistible concoction of ink on paper.
How did you ideate and co-author this book during the lockdown?
Tapas: I always wanted to write a book but neither did I have the time nor the expertise in it. My niece, Aryani, is an author with two books to her name. During the lockdown, the idea was born out of a casual phone call in March 2020. I was stuck at home in Delhi while she was in Kolkata. It was then decided that I would tell her the story and she would fine-tune it for a book. The idea eventually shaped into a manuscript over a period of six months. I would narrate the stories to her on WhatsApp. I even bought a new sim for this because I did not want to get distracted by messages on my actual WhatsApp number. For an adman who has been an avid reader all his life, venturing into writing fiction has been a new experience.
Aryani: He (Tapas Gupta) typed approximately 1.5 lakh words on WhatsApp to me, which I restructured into fiction, chapter-wise on the laptop, and then we edited and re-edited the whole content several times. This actually makes The Mad Ad Years the first and only novel to have been co-authored by two persons over WhatsApp chat messages, residing in two cities almost 1500 km apart, without physically meeting because of the pandemic and the subsequent lockdowns. We won’t be surprised if this actually gets enlisted into the Limca Book of Records or even the Guinness Book of World Records!
To Aryani: With prior experience in writing a book, what were the challenges while writing this book?
As many people know, (or some might not) Tapas Gupta is my mama (maternal uncle). So, for me, co-authoring a book with someone in the family was a thrilling experience. Also, other family members got involved in some way as they helped us with ideating, advising, marketing, etc. I can proudly call The Mad Ad Years a ‘family production’. The difficult part was communicating because mama resides in Delhi and I live in Kolkata, it was during the nationwide lockdown, and coordination had to be done over calls and messages only. This was definitely a challenge. But when there’s a will, there’s a way. For us, 2pm and 2am became similar. We would spend the afternoons discussing, agreeing, and disagreeing, and then we spent sleepless nights writing, editing, deleting, and writing again. However, after we were done with the first two chapters of the book, the rest of it felt like a cakewalk.
(L-R) Biplab Ganguli, veteran newscaster, Doordarshan; Major (retired) Shamsul Arefin, part of Bangladesh Liberation Army; Tridib Chatterjee, honorary secretary, Publishers and Booksellers Guild; Tapas Gupta, Aryani Banerjee and Snehashis Sur, president, Kolkata Press Club at the book launch
To Tapas: Since the book is about the advertising world, are the stories real?
Tapas: Well, the stories and characters are all inspired by real-life incidents and people. But as we say it is fiction, and a lot of things have been tweaked to make it interesting. After the release of the book in 2021, many people from the industry called me and asked if a certain character in the book is a real person, taking their name. So yes, there is some similarity but we have changed all the names. The stories are definitely real because the book talks about the advertising era. As the story unfolds, it oscillates the readers between the past and present. It takes them back in time along with the protagonist, to the present time when the world around us is very, very different. The story of the book can be made into a very attractive web series. We are vying for it. Let’s see what happens. (fingers crossed)
Tell us how did you decide on the name and cover of the book
Aryani: The title of the book, The Mad Ad Years was ideated keeping in mind the bizarre, quirky, wild stories from the advertising world. Every little thing about this book, from the decision to co-author India’s first advertising fiction over a random phone call during the lockdown, to the moment it went to the printing press, has been crazy. To an extent, we were greatly inspired by Mad Men, which is an American period drama television series. So, it was on our minds while we were thinking of the title. Tapas Gupta has witnessed the changing landscape of the ad world for over four decades as an insider, so he knew what exactly the cover should look like. The idea behind the cover of the book is his brainchild, Devabrata Chakrabarty has superbly done the artwork.
Are you planning to co-write another book anytime soon?
Aryani: Well, I would love to! I am working on my own books for now. But it would be great to pen down another book with mama. I am sure he has a lot more in store for the world to know.
Tapas: I am not sure if I will but yes, there can be a book on the changing times and the new-age advertising industry. Nothing is on the cards but I guess we can do it once again if there’s any solid plan.
'The Mad Ad Years' published by Blue Rose Publishers is available on Amazon for Rs 274.