It threw light on the ad agency, its departments, its functions, and the position I was trying to make my own. And by the time I had read the last page, my resolve to pursue advertising as a career had been cast in stone.
Nothing to do with the book's selling powers. I just found that I had all the necessary qualifications. No degree (not mandatory). A gift of the gab. Good spelling. A way with the words I could spell. A way of avoiding those I couldn’t. A general curiosity about things that were not my business.
Not that I had other options, but I couldn’t ask for more.
The book also told me one other thing. I was working in the wrong place. An agency which asked for very little work and paid for it might sound like a dream come true, but it wasn’t going to get me my next job. There was a more important currency to be earned, my portfolio. And that wouldn’t happen without work, irrespective of how my bank account fared in a general health check.
By month two however, the alarm bells started ringing. Because the cash registers weren't. My two thousand five hundred rupee salary was coming in instalments. A thousand the first week. Another the next. The rest came sometime during what was left of the month. Was this, I wondered, what they meant by 'salary break-up'.
And then the Lord spoke to me. His words were loud and clear, and exemplary in their economy of phrasing.
“Man does not live by eye candy alone.”
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