Bookshelf/Rahul Da Cunha

Rahul De Cunha’s reading habits are largely ruled by advertising and theatrethese days. This ad guy and theatre playwright finds himself thumbingthrough `dramatic’ books for the script that he could well transform into aplay, or you could find him scanning a book on advertising.

The latest one on his table is The Cutting Edge of Advertising by JimAitchison, which he finds extremely engaging with its ideas on advertisingthat could work for kids and Generation X. If left with time away from histwo passions, Rahul would go all out for Indian authors who, he feels, “areamazingly good writers excelling in wonderful details of places weMumbaiites tend never to visit. Take Arundhati Roy in God of Small Things,for instance. She takes us across Kerala. In Butter Chicken in Ludhiana,Pankaj Mishra carries us through the entire North.”

Books are crucial, he says, for the fountainhead of ideas they can be foranything and everything.