At Bensons, I got to handle all the major accounts and it gave me a chance to learn much more than I could have done anywhere else. Lallu, meanwhile, had got a job with Aiyars, another advertising agency. One day, he called me and told me, ‘Why don’t we start our own agency?’ Although I was reluctant to leave Bensons, I also wanted to take a chance so with whatever Provident Fund and Gratuity that I got, we opened the ‘Creative Unit’ office in a broken-down wooden building and made a reception which was right next to the toilet. The office consisted of just four rooms besides the reception, a room for me downstairs, a staircase that led upstairs where four people could sit and the artist cabin was where the water tank was and in this rickety place, we started ‘Creative Unit’. Next to us was Jaico, a publishing company at which Ashwin Shah was the Managing Director. 

It is tough to imagine we could get clients in this rickety building but we did manage. Our first client was Bentex, which was Lallu’s uncle’s. They made watch straps and the advertising campaign that I did for them resulted in them jumping from 70 lakhs turnover to 1 crore which really surprised Mr. Ramchand who was Lallu’s uncle and he asked me to specially to come over to meet him. After Bentex, there was no stopping us. Immediately after that we got Dawn – a Ruia company which was at that time handled by Bensons. Though I had promised Bensons I would not take any of their accounts, I had not handled Dawn before, so that was fair game. After Dawn, we got Fleet Ball Pens followed by Mercantile Bank, Glaxo, Austimal, Boots Calamine. You name it, we had it. The largest accounts started coming to our agency and we moved from that rickety building to one nearby the Khyber Restaurant building on the 2nd floor. We had to climb two wooden floors before you reached our office. My luck was that I had some very good talent.  Besides Nicholas Gonsavles, I had Amol Bose who later went to handle Charag Din. Then also came Shilpa Shah. I did not know who Shilpa Shah but she turned out to be the wife of Praful Shah, the owner of Garden Silk Mills. Shilpa told me that she would not be able to give her own company to us, which I replied ‘We don’t need Garden Silk as we already handled Khataus.’ What we needed was good copywriters and executives. She turned out to be one of our most talented copywriters and she was the one who introduced Shobha Rajadhaksha (now De) to me at Creative Unit. I told Shilpa that I don’t think models could write and I doubted that she would be able to do the job, so I gave her a test immediately. I told her about clients who made jute for gunny bags and wanted people to convert using it as a fabric for making dresses or gowns. Shobha wrote a headline that I still remember. She said, “Wear a curtain to a party tonight’. I immediately hired her and she started working under Dharmarajan, one of our executives who gave her the toughest assignments but she carried them around even though Dharmarajan would get on everybody’s nerves. The crowning glory was when we got Nalco, a Tata Company which was handled by Ratan Tata. I gave the account to Dharmarajan to handle and trust me, he made a holy mess of it. Since we had so many accounts, I sometimes felt that I should have carried on with advertising but it was not that advertising got on my nerves. It was the clients. Each one brought their personal problems to me and cried on my shoulders. Watumal of Fleet told me about his wife who left him to join an ashram and how broken-hearted he was. Meenakshi Chauhan who was one of my closest friends who wanted to marry Ismail Jasanwala who was a Muslim and her parents did not approve. Like that each one had their own problems and I had to play father or brother or friend outside office hours which started to get on my nerves. So from advertising, I wanted to get into Publishing and that is how Stardust was born. Shobha was more than happy to get out of Creative Unit as she could not stand Dharmarajan, so she moved back to the old office in Agra Building and started Stardust over there. Not many people gave us a chance – they thought it would be a long time before we could be a success as there was competition from leading companies mainly Times of India’s ‘Filmfare’ besides which there was ‘Film Information’, ‘Star & Style’ and various others. However since we all were brought up in South Bombay and in those days we were fed with a diet of English movies, we had no respect or regard for Hindi Films though I thoroughly enjoyed them. 

To be continued…watch out for this space…