The past few weeks have felt unusually heavy for anyone who grew up on a steady diet of Indian storytelling, be it advertising, cinema, or television. Three creative souls that gave us our staple diet of entertainment and human connections left us - Piyush Pandey, Satish Shah, and Asrani.

Different personalities. Different mediums. Same magic. All three had something special, an ability to touch our hearts and leave behind a creative legacy that time cannot erase.

Piyush gave Indian advertising its voice and pride. At a time when Indian advertising was aping the West, he instilled a sense of belonging to the emerging India we are today. We embraced our country’s diverse languages, laughed at its peculiarities and cried at its unabashed emotions. 

Satish turned observation into art. He could make a single raised eyebrow say more than a page of dialogue. The characters he played were so real, we recognised ourselves in them. He was the laughter in the living room, the familiar warmth that made everyday Indian life feel lighter, truer, more bearable.

Asrani was the eternal comedian, the scene-stealer. He was a master of timing, of tone, of truth. He made absurdity feel human.

His comedy wasn’t about escape. It was about understanding life’s beautiful chaos. He made us laugh, not at life, but through it.
Three creative giants who understood one shared truth. The power of emotion. Often told through the lens of irreverence and humour. Three ‘content creators’ who understood India not through data, but through the heart. They showed us that humour and heart are universal languages. And when you create from a place of honesty, your work doesn’t just live, it lives on

To many of us, their passing feels personal because, in some way, they shaped how we felt, spoke, and saw ourselves. And through that, we felt seen. 

The lump in the throat from 'Har ghar kuch kehta hai'.
The smiles that spread from Sarabhai vs Sarabhai.
The chuckle that 'Angrezo ke zamane ke jailor' invokes. 

In the mad rush of our lives, few of us stop to think about what we’ll leave behind. We spend our lives chasing the next big idea, the next post, the next trend, the next promotion. But in the end, maybe the true measure of our work isn’t what wins today. It’s what will move someone tomorrow. It’s that film a young creative watches on YouTube years later and feels inspired to join this mad, beautiful business. It’s that line someone still hums without remembering where they first heard it. 

It’s worth pausing to think about that. Our lives are fragile. The industry moves fast. Algorithms change. Trends come and go. But ideas born from truth and emotion have a way of living on. They echo in conversations, resurface in nostalgia, and inspire new generations of creators who never even met us. The truest measure of our work isn’t how loud it is today, but how long it stays in our cultural memory.

Human-centric creativity is timeless. It doesn’t fade when we do. The time of these giants on Earth may have ended. But their work lives on. The fame and applause will fade, but not the heartprint they leave behind. 

That’s legacy. The ultimate KPI.

The author is founder and chief creative officer, HumanSense (Sri Lanka). This column first appeared in our November issue.
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