I had a ringside view of Rituparno’s eventful life from 1985 when he started his 10-year stint at just-born advertising agency, Response. We stayed connected forever — two decades after his move to full-time filmmaking — phonecalls, mails, texts, tweets till May 29 when he tweeted me last.

Ritu, 20-something, came in as a trainee writer in Bengali after doing his master’s in economics! A crazy decision, an experiment for both of us, based entirely on reams of his unpublished writings he shared. A decision that we both valued deeply later.

A tyro who turned a pro almost overnight, Ritu became a shining star among our all-star cast. We caught on to his phenomenal worth quickly enough, backed his development, encouraged his ever-diversifying cerebrations and profited from it. He was a writer first, then a maker of commercials and documentaries, but like the rest of us, participated irrepressibly in anything and everything creative, never repeating himself, always reinventing.

I quote an erstwhile colleague: “Ritu churned out rhymes in Bengali at the drop of a hat for paints and soaps and creams and what not. Won us top prizes year after year, with his left hand as it were! Other agencies scoured libraries to hunt out suitable quotes from ancient texts to beat his Pujo ads, little knowing that Rituparno was adept at simulating various styles and various authors without any reference whatsoever.”

The same pen that gave Boroline its timeless signature, Bango jiboner anga, also gave Margo soap its unsurpassable promise, Dekhte khaaraap maakhte bhaalo, helping re-energise the ageing market leaders.

I chose not to get into his films for most readers know a lot about them and will surely hear more in the coming days and weeks. His films are obviously his most visible public work — work for which he won applause from millions and accolades from India and the world. During his last two years in the agency, he finished Hirer Angti, his first feature film, and began work on his second, Unishe April. At this point we jointly decided it would be best for him to move out of advertising and turn into full-time filmmaking. The rest is history.

Ritu’s other work as an editor and TV presenter are equally well-known. These belong to the last two decades of his work. What is not so well known is the outstanding work he did as an advertising professional, work that set benchmarks for many later-day first-timers, even veterans. Especially in Bengali.

It is impossible to write even a telegraphic story of Rituparno’s life and work outside films. Allow me to close with some online-type tags which, when combined, represent an improbable but entirely actual individual — one without parallel in modern times.

Insatiable curiosity, constant learning, tireless application, endless energy, childlike simplicity, ability to connect with, engage, get into the skin and bond with virtually anybody, to emote effortlessly, write not just imaginatively but correctly, too, without errors in spelling or syntax with grammar and rhetorics intact.

Here’s an anecdote that came from another erstwhile colleague. It speaks volumes about the kind of person Rituparno was. “Once, he came to our house armed with his script-khata and narrated a portion of his script of a film on Radha and Krishna. I will never forget that winter afternoon in our balcony where the slanted rays fell on Rituparno’s face and I realised that he was crying as he read out how Radha was crying.”

Written with inputs from Anjana Basu, Arindam Nandy, Chhanda Karlekar, Indrani Sen and Probir Ghosh