Trying to explain Prasoon Joshi to myself: Partha Sinha writes

I have often wondered why I like Prasoon Joshi so much. Not admire — admiration is easy and plentiful in our business. I mean like. The kind of liking that does not require maintenance, that survives distance, hierarchy, and those long phone calls that begin with work and end somewhere else.

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It isn’t an obvious affection. Advertising is full of talented people I respect and even enjoy. Prasoon sits in a smaller, less definable space. He makes no effort to impress. Which, paradoxically, is what disarms you.

When I first met him in Delhi, I assumed it was charm. Delhi encourages that assumption. It rewards wit and conversation. But charm fades quickly when you work long enough with someone. This didn’t. So it had to be something else.

I then thought it might be originality. Prasoon is one of the few people in advertising who is genuinely original—not because he tries to be different, but because he seems uninterested in borrowing. He listens inward more than he listens around. But originality, on its own, can be tiring. Some original thinkers exhaust you. Prasoon doesn’t.

Trust came next. When he once called and asked me to join him to run McCann, I didn’t ask a single question. That surprised me. I usually ask many. Somewhere I knew the work would be clean. Not easy. Just clean. But trust explains respect better than affection.

The answer, when it came, arrived quietly. It emerged across conversations that wandered, pauses that weren’t filled, and shared irritations with the world. I like Prasoon because he is unhurried with thought. He has no anxiety about nuance. In an industry that prefers conclusions, he is comfortable with process. He doesn’t compress meaning to meet format. He lets it take its time.

His love for Hindustani classical music suddenly made sense to me. The same raga, sung differently, remains truthful. Deviation is not failure. Interpretation is not dilution. That patience—with ideas, with people, with silence—feels rare now.

Still, something was missing.

And then, during a completely unnecessary phone call—one of those that begins with work and ends without destination—it struck me. Prasoon is childlike. Not childish. Childlike. He is unembarrassed by the unfinished. Comfortable with the slightly odd. Willing to stay with an idea before it knows what it wants to become. He doesn’t rush thoughts into adulthood. He lets them play a little longer.

In a profession that teaches you to grow up very fast—to become efficient, strategic, presentable—Prasoon quietly refused. He grew, but he didn’t harden. He succeeded, but he didn’t armour himself.

I think that is why creativity seems to return to him so easily.

And perhaps that is why I like him.

Not because he explains things.

Not because he arrives at answers.

But because, around him, it feels acceptable to linger. To live with a thought, to nurture it and take it to a rewarding place.

And sometimes, that is enough.

Partha Sinha is a senior advisor with a global consulting company and also founder of ABLTY advisory LLP.