Asad Lalljee, the man leading Mumbai’s cultural enthusiasm
Arundhuti Dasgupta on Asad Lalljee, the adman leading Mumbai’s new-found cultural enthusiasm
If you were to pick up any book that profiles the city of Bombay before it turned into Mumbai, chances are you would encounter an Asad Lalljee-like character in its pages. Sharply dressed, accent clipped, a lover of the arts and the good life and a Western sensibility.
Everything about Lalljee is a throwback to the past when the city’s cultural identity was largely confined to its southern tip. For that is where the wealthy lived and the bulk of the city’s performance venues and art galleries were located. This is the city of Salman Rushdie and Amit Chaudhuri novels and old Bollywood movies.
Times have changed, dramatically, and so has the city. But Lalljee is very much the man of the moment, locating his métier firmly within Mumbai’s new-found cultural enthusiasm. This is a world that he says he is lucky to have stumbled into. As an advertising and marketing man and passionate consumer of the arts, he would once have been fortunate to be counted as a favoured outsider by the artistes he promotes and supports. Instead Lalljee stands at the centre, especially since 2016, when he was appointed curator of the newly restored Royal Opera House, Mumbai.
As curator Lalljee is responsible for the calendar at the Royal Opera House and he knows that a lot depends on how he positions the venue. It is not just the opinion of artistes that he needs to be tuned into; it is just as important to get the “right” audiences and be seen with the “right” people. This is a line few have managed to walk with grace or success.
Lalljee has an idea of what he is up against. “I am not an artiste, I am not an academic and I tell everyone that right at the start,” he says. It helps define the role he is creating for himself and the organisation he works for. Lalljee is also senior vice president, Essar Group, and CEO of AVID Learning, a public programming initiative and creative platform under the group. His role as curator of the Opera House is also under the Avid umbrella.
A senior professional associated with arts programmes and the funding ecosystem for years, Lalljee is an excellent networker. He can bring people together and spin a fabulous programme, but he is no expert. He is a good middleman, at best. This is a criticism that Lalljee probably encounters often. But he has learnt to step around that without trampling on too many toes. It helps that he is based out of Mumbai, a city still seen as a newbie on the cultural scene, and not Delhi, where the artistcritic-donor community can be brutal, as one arts writer points out.
“The cultural consumption of Bombay is increasing. If you provide good products and services, they (audiences) will come,” says Lalljee. He knows his words could rankle with traditionalists. Few artistes would equate the work they do with a product or a service. But then Lalljee says that the reason he is able to put together a programme that people actually attend is not just because he is a cultural aficionado but also because he is a marketing and advertising man. “Culture can’t be a pie in the sky,” he says.
Lalljee graduated from St Xavier’s College in Mumbai before going to the US to study marketing communication. He then worked with McCann-Erickson and Hill Holiday, a subsidiary of advertising giant IPG. His marketing hat is a natural fit and he is not shy about wearing it. He says that he is opportunistic about programming, keeping an eye out for who is in town and festivals around the country so that he can take his pick.
He is always looking out, he says. And no opportunity escapes his hawk-eyed vigilance. For instance, at one Ficci conference on the arts and culture, he found it odd that Mumbai was never home to such conferences and conversations. He pitched Mumbai as a venue to the organisers and then worked hard to bring it to the city. “It was nice to bring a degree of formalcy to the cultural scene in the city,” he says.
The business of arts and culture is ignored by most governments. Lalljee says this is unfortunate. The arts can help a city earn millions, besides, of course, he hastens to add, nourish its soul. Even within India there are a few success stories that Mumbai can copy. Jaipur and Kochi have both managed to make economic successes out of their artistic/literary adventures. And, of course, there is the New York way — the Metropolitan Museum is his favourite — and he is always looking for a way to get there.
But Mumbai is no New York. Infrastructure is a nightmare and people don’t jump on and off buses to go from one cultural event to another. But then one has to make the most of what one has. So Lalljee has been driving collaborations to make sure that the city can be in many places at the same time. He works with the Jaipur Literature Festival, for instance, to do a curtain-raiser programme in Mumbai. He is also working with arts and culture festival, Serendipity, in Goa, and there are programmes that Avid hosts in different and distant venues.
What evokes his interest the most, given that he has his finger in almost every pie? It takes a few seconds for Lalljee to put a pin on his exhaustive map of activities. Architecture, he says, is a passion, which he says he finds himself returning to repeatedly. “I travel, I see, I learn,” he says.
“Never underestimate the power of learning,” he continues. His life changed when his father took him to a talk by a creative director of a global agency. He remembers being blown away by the commercial films screened at the talk and by the overpowering presence of the man who called himself god, Alyque Padamsee.
The city has changed a lot since the talk, but the talk left a lasting impression. He sees the power that a talk and a film had on him, changing his view of the world, and over the years he has learnt the value of bringing a bit of the West into the East and getting more “glocal”. Bombay can never be a European city or an American centre, but that is one way to look at it, he says. “You can get bothered by the dirt and the heat and the grime. And then you can see something wonderful at the Opera House or listen to an engaging conversation at the NGMA [National Gallery of Modern Art] and take away a completely different perspective of the city.”
How does he see the city? A map of programmes, most likely. He works every day, planning and curating and networking through the days that he is not attending one of his events. But more importantly, perhaps, the city to him is a group of people who have helped him understand the arts and fit into the city’s culture.
How does he deal with the new political dispensation? Does he find it culturally stifling? Lalljee responds that he does not see any constraint as a deterrent. “Besides, I don’t do anything directly dealing with politics. At least not overtly. For instance, I won’t do any straight-up programming on theology but I would look at art and architectural styles under different religions.” At the end of the day, he works for a corporate organisation and that is what defines the boundaries of his engagement with the city’s cultural rejuvenation.
‘IF YOU PROVIDE GOOD PRODUCTS AND SERVICES, THE AUDIENCES WILL COME,’ SAYS LALLJEE