Gerson da Cunha reads a poem

A luminous human being passed away last week. Gerson da Cunha was legendary to his friends and colleagues— but we learn our lessons from the way he lived

I saw Gerson da Cunha for the first time in 1970 when I was a stripling reporter for a lively community newspaper called Dateline Delhi. The 7th Asian Advertising Congress was coming to town; the luminaries of Indian advertising would be there. It was thrilling and electrifying to be witness to such a spectacle.
The Indian contingent had been having a dry run of their presentation a day earlier and I had been allowed to watch from a discreet seat. The best and the brightest of Indian advertising were there, larger than life — Alyque Padamsee, Gerson da Cunha, Roger Pereira, Ahmed Ibrahim and others, working together on something unheard of called a “multi-media presentation”. A rainbow of slides would simultaneously light up multiple screens, synchronised with music and voice. 

That entire afternoon, wide-eyed, awestruck and still in my first year of college, I basked in the glow cast by the gods of Indian communication. Gerson was 41 then, in the prime of his life, already a colossus of Bombay’s theatre and advertising worlds. I was a mere 18.

The last time I met Gerson, he was 90 and I was 67. It was a July evening in Mumbai and we were sipping wine at the home of Padmini Mirchandani, publisher, connoisseur and socialite, and also one of Gerson’s favourite people. He was still a giant of a man and his voice was as commandingly resonant as ever, but at 90, every human being wears frailty like an invisible cloak.  Even a short walk down a corridor could leave him exhausted.

I reminded him of when I’d first seen him; he wouldn’t remember me, of course.“Ah yes,” Gerson said at once. “Wasn’t that a time and a half! We had 76 slides being screened on five carousels in perfect sync.” He reeled off the names of five technicians who had made the show possible.

Remembering moments from interactions with people you’ve met in passing is the mark of a great soul to whom everyone matters equally and rank means nothing. That evening, he reminded me of times when we had visited Unilever’s Chairman together, like equal professionals recalling the good old days together rather than what we had really been — a CEO with a creative greenhorn.

At 90, you’re not supposed to remember so much and in such detail. But as with cars and kitchen knives, it’s always what you use the most gleams the longest. Gerson had a non-stop mind, capable of juggling ideas, events, dates and histories effortlessly, with prodigious powers of recall. 

Gerson’s other superpower was his ability to live without leaving footsteps. Pervin Varma, as head of CRY, worked closely with Gerson, then a CRY trustee, for years without knowing that he had helped draft the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. Gerson also doesn’t tell you about his work to promote mother-and-child health in Brazil’s favelas which won him the government’s Order of Rio Branco. Gerson had mastered the art of letting go of his own past.

This titan of a man passed away last week, without much fuss, at age 92. To many of us who knew him and had worked with him, it felt as though something luminous had quietly left our lives. 

Then I discovered something that he had left behind. The conversation at Padmini’s had turned to poetry that evening, which Gerson loved. I’m still not sure what made me talk about Journey’s End, a short poem I’d written some months after my father passed away in 1990.

Would Gerson mind reading it out? Of course he wouldn’t. 

He read slowly, to himself and almost about himself, feeling each word before he spoke it. It was a short poem, only two verses, but he somehow turned it into a resonant ode about dying with dignity. When it was over, we just rose and hugged each other. Our words had dried up.

Padmini captured this on video, and I found the footage last week. You can see it for yourself at this link, https://youtu.be/A50KUCo1RxA

For others, here is what Gerson read.

Journey’s End
Cast not a shadow as you enter.
Leave not a ripple as you leave.
Go quietly into the wind;
Stir neither sadness nor peace.
No hand-made monument must mark your place,
Nor kindness leave others beholden.
Go as you came, amidst wonder and wailing
Look back not once in your passing.
Touch not the longing as you enter,
And leave without grieving as you leave.
The journeys are over, the seeds were all sown,
No anthem for those you bereave.
And if you were loving, then hold not to that,
And if you were loved, let that go.
Now you will be starlight and you will be mud,

Be body.

Be breath.

Be no more.

Here, viewed from there. C Y Gopinath, in Bangkok, throws unique light and shadows on Mumbai, the city that raised him. You can reach him at cygopi@gmail.com

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The views expressed in this column are the individual’s and don’t represent those of the paper

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