While most Mumbaiites city were busy celebrating Holi, Cyrus Dadachanji met up with a multi-faceted gourmet, who's colourful life makes all the gulal in the world pale in comparison.

Ask any advertising person if he's heard of Prahlad Kakkar and more likely than not you'll get a very funny look in response. For Prahlad Kakkar of Genesis films has made more TV commercials over the last 27 years than you can count! In fact, he's nothing short of an institution in the advertising world. A maverick filmmaker who has universally been acknowledged for taking ad films into another realm altogether. Although he has absolutely no formal education in filmmaking. That in itself should be enough for most people. But then, they don't make 'em like Prahlad very often.

Let's go back a bit to Prahlad's days at Ferguson College, Pune, where he majored in Economics and Military Strategy. Hardly the subjects to take if you're planning to make a career as a filmmaker, but then stranger things have been known to happen. And when he wasn't in class, Prahlad was catching up on the action in the celluloid world, in a 'Film Appreciation Class'. Not strange, considering that the Classes were held in the neighbouring Wadia Girls College…

At Ferguson's, Prahlad never seemed to be able to stay out of mischief. If hunting pigeons by torchlight wasn't bad enough, Prahlad went one step beyond and actually cooked the in his room! (Which incidentally was the same room Lokmanya Tilak stayed in). When he wasn't cooking up trouble, he was supposedly corrupting the morals of Brahmin students by teaching them bawdy songs. This led to his undoing as far as Ferguson's hostel was concerned. Nevertheless, he graduated with honours from the college.

Prahlad moved from Delhi to Mumbai, way back in '71. Holed up as a paying guest in a small flat near Apollo Bunder, Prahlad had to survive on a princely sum of three hundred and fifty rupees a month. The only saving grace was that he had access to the kitchen. And that's where his journey into culinary nirvana began.

The first time Prahlad invited a girl home for dinner, he served her scrambled eggs and wine, with candles for ambience of course. He admits that she wasn't too impressed by the food, but the fact that he'd taken so much trouble really got her! Scrambled eggs soon gave way to more elaborate concoctions. The owner of a meat shop around the corner let him have the odd cut at cut-price and threw in a recipe or two for good measure. Prahlad's charm and down-to-earth attitude soon had the fisher women at Sassoon dock eating out of his palm and giving him fish at unbelievably low rates. Prahlad learnt how to identify fresh fish, clean it and cook it in various ways, thanks to his friends at Sassoon dock. Prahlad swears that fisher women are the friendliest and most large-hearted people he's ever come across… you just have to take the trouble to talk to them. In fact, even today, Prahlad has a date with the fisherwomen in Bandra every Sunday morning… and wonder of wonders, they refuse to take money from him!

Prahlad soon became a pro at tossing up a meal on a shoestring budget, but even these candlelight affairs were becoming a little too expensive to hold on a regular basis. Alternate arrangements had to be thought of. So, Prahlad, Jiggs Kalra (yes, you read right) and Vikram Singh hit upon a novel plan. They persuaded Behram Contractor, a.k.a. Busybee, to let Jiggs write the Eating Out column in the Evening News, once a week.Thus, out of sheer necessity, began another gourmet's rise to stardom.

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