Utterly butterly relevant: The madman Sylvester daCunha behind Amul girl

Brand pundits also agree that only a rare few ad campaigns can beat the creativity and topicality of the Amul Girl cartoons

It was the summer of 2000. A bunch of impressionable young schoolchildren in South Delhi had just been introduced to a not-so-impressive looking adman in his late fifties. He was the guest speaker at an art and drawing workshop designed for primary schoolkids in the middle of their vacation.

I was a part of the group and remember quite clearly how most of us had racked our brains wondering what an “adman” really meant and how he could teach us drawing. Our puerile minds latched on to an inevitable moniker — “madman” — that, I now realise, is quite common