Waiting List

Shree and I were booked to leave for Chennai that evening. To have enough time to pack and leave, we decided that plans for the day should be short but meaningful. So we decided to meet Glenn J Dmello — an art director in DDB Mudra. Glenn along with his team had used truck art as the execution style for a recent advertising campaign they developed. He suggested that we should definitely meet Ajmal Mohammad, the creative head of Glenn’s team while they worked on the campaign. So we went ahead and met Ajmal. Over the conversation with him we realized that he had travelled with some truck drivers in the past and had also made a short film on the same subject. He was very kind enough to share important information and some contacts with us.

Come evening, we boarded the train to Chennai, and found out that our tickets hadn’t been confirmed. The Ticket Collector told us, that we could try travelling with our ‘Waiting List’ tickets until the next train station to see if our tickets could get confirmed by then. But unfortunately, we had to get off at the Pune station and return to Mumbai. Two of us who had packed our bags for one week with a lot of excitement were found unpacking the very next morning with an equal level of disappointment.

But the research had to continue. That evening, we met Mr. Balkaar Singh, owner of a fleet of trucks and tankers in Chembur. He helped us with some very useful insights related to our subject.