Growing up with my mother who at one time was the Creative Director OBM* meant that I was adhoc included in a lot of commercials and print ads. I also had the good fortune of meeting a David Ogilvy (I hadn't had the slightest idea why people (including my mother) were fussing over him).
Some of the campaigns I was a part of or at least tried out for** — Campa Orange (shot in Lodhi Gardens in 1982), Thums Up (with Kapil Dev who told me to sit on his lap which I was too shy to do), Dalda Oil and many others.
I was also exposed to a lot of ad shoots and travelled across the country to see the making of the Usha Fans ads, Kelvinator print ad, the Modi Xerox annual reports and many others.
*O&M was called OBM (Ogilvy Benson & Mather) in the 1980s.
** For the Dalda Oil print ad, I was to eat a puri and smile at the camera. I was a hungry kid when I was picked up from school and taken to the photographer's studio for the shoot — and ended up eating a lot of puris and not being able to smile since I was so busy eating!
