He is good at coining one-liners. ‘A lot can happen over coffee’ for Café Coffee Day. ‘The heart has its reasons’ for C Krishniah Chetty & Son. ‘Crafted from desire’ for Vanity Fair.
That’s what Tarun Cherian does as creative director of Scion Advertising. And when he is not working to bring home the moolah, he’s crafting poems and studying auras. Drop by Kahawa on Cunningham Road between July 17 and July 21, and you will run into 37 of his drawings. And what are they? ‘Aura visions captured in ink and Ki energy’.
Cherian classifies aura into seven kinds. And he feels, most people have all of them, though some auras may be suppressed, and others prominent. “The first aura is closest to the body and you see it in the form of electricity. With this vision, you can scan the health of a person,” says Cherian. “The second is what most people experience while they are dreaming. It deals with desire and imagination.”
The third is largely about thoughts and that’s usually in fine yellow. The fourth is a cluster of clouds. ‘If they are brighter, it means, you are doing well and if they are dark, it means you are sad. They convey moods and emotions.’
The fifth variety is something very few can see. “It appears like an x-ray in deep blue or black. Many schizophrenics have these visions where they see themselves enveloped in black.”
The sixth is all about intuitions. ‘This is where you see a brilliant explosion of white light, something you experience when you suddenly feel you’ve got what you were looking for all along.’
The seventh is all about divinity. ‘It’s the gold aura you see in saints.’
But Cherian says, there’s no such thing as a perfect aura. “It’s rarely that all these auras are present in a person,” he says. ”And when I do meditation workshops, it’s usually just one person for one-and-a-half days, after which I let the person experience it himself… see and touch auras and come up with his own experiments.”
What is also keeping Cherian in good humour is poetry. And he is at it since his school days. ‘I remember writing about a water drop and its brief flight of freedom before it dissolves into nothingness.’
Till date, Cherian has written over 500 poems, and 30 were compiled in a book by Writers Workshop in Kolkata titled ‘Speaking of Tongues’. “I have also contributed poems to Debonair, The Indian Express and Femina. A collection of 80-100 of my poems titled ‘One Foot on Earth’ is ready, and I am looking for a publisher.”
Not that he’s academically backward. The Mumbai-born has a masters in economics from the Delhi School of Economics. “I was on a holiday in Hyderabad where my sister lives, when I applied for a job at Sistas and got it,” says Cherian. “After three years, I joined O&M in Mumbai as a creative supervisor working on such campaigns as Asian Paints and Kinetic Engineering.”
Three-and-a-half years later, he became creative director at Maabozell in 1994. In the next six years, he found himself working on campaigns for Jockey, ABB, Prestige Group, Vanity Fair and HP, among others. In 2000, he joined Scion Advertising. And that meant, working on campaigns for Café Coffee Day, US Pizza, Preciose Chandeliers, Allergen, Texmo and Thrill condom. “I get half my ideas during the client brief,” says Cherian. “Headlines are easy because they are more basic, but it’s the base line that’s a little difficult to crack. But I am usually quick at that kind of thing, because you get better over time.”
His wife Celia (35) is an advertising person-turned-reiki master. “And that helps when you sometimes can’t heal yourself,” says Cherian. “But yes, what energises me is listening to Deep Purple, Jethro Tull, Pink Floyd and Ruth Megan.”
I, ME, MYSELF
Tarun Cherian (39)
Creative director, Scion advertising
MA (economics), Delhi School of Economics
Worked for Sistas, Hyderabad; O&M, Mumbai and Maabozell, Bangalore
Done campaigns for Jockey, Prestige, ABB, Vanity Fair, HP, Café Coffee Day, C Krishniah Chetty, Allergen
Has written over 500 poems; contributed for Femina, Debonair and The Indian Express
Studying aura for the past ten years; consciously in the past four years; has exhibited his drawings on auras in Delhi and Bangalore
Has done book reviews for the Deccan Herald
Trips on sci-fi and fantasy books; conducts meditation workshops
Lends his ear to Jethro Tull, Pink Floyd and Deep Purple
(Published in City Reporter, 2003)