Before Google Maps, we had dealer panels. (Contains harmless LOTR spoilers)

Despite proof checking my 85,000 word manuscript numerous times, yes I have to admit it, I still find a wayward comma, a premature quotation mark, or—like this one—a sentence that desperately craves a semi colon or something, to give the poor reader a break.?

Phew! Go breathe.

This comes as a shock to me, (rather like those dreams where the exam you have excellently prepared for and the exam setter’s agenda are wildly different) because I have received the most excellent training. I have spent a million years practicing hyperbole and punctuation; I have overcome sleep and hunger to catch extra spaces, typos, absent hyphens and other orcs. And here is the great learning (cuz, you gotta learn or you burn, as some pop song probably said): working on dealer panels has given me two gifts. One: it has sharpened my proof checker’s instinct to such an OCD level, that I now suffer greatly from poorly punctuated text messages. Second: they helped me discover a new city in a pre-Google Maps world.?

I don’t have to sarcastically prattle on and on about how it (checking deal-pans) makes a copywriter’s eyes capable of spotting plumbing issues at the International Space Station; everybody knows good copywriters eventually retire at hill-top organic farms with a hotline to NASA. What I do want to prattle on and on about is how it (yep, checking deal-pans) helped a newbie-to-Bangalore discover places.?

I was ‘frush’ (as advertising people for some reason like to pronounce ‘fresh’ — what? it’s only me?) in Bangalore and still familiarising myself with the Sandras of the city. And it was through the dealer panels that I discovered exotic sounding Pets and Hallis. Some of the fashion stores gave helpful landmarks, which—as much as it indirectly provided commercial value for them—gave me immense navigational bliss.?

That Sandra is near the SBI Bank, bro. Ah ok, got it, thanks. Fashion stores became the compass points that helped me unravel this city. Eventually, I could connect them in my mind with imaginary dotted lines—this is when you recall the Beautiful Mind meme of hypnotically scribbling brilliance on a window.?

Once a dealer panel had ‘Motor Arcade’. And Bangloreans will instantly holler—as I did to my client management counterpart—‘dude, that should be Mota Arcade.’ But apparently the sacred client sheet had ‘Motor’, and so do we really want to mess with it, our rear end is covered, let’s finish this and get the hell outta here. It felt like Frodo and Sam debating whether Gandalf said Mordor or Mortar. By then I knew enough about the city to know it was most certainly Mota not Motor. How this matter ended is not important—you may rest reassured no jobs were lost, no crisis ensued.?

After coming across Mota Arcade numerous times earlier in dealer panels, I had gone to Brigade Road just to see what this Mota Arcade was with my own eyes. I knew I was correct and the client sheet was wrong. Yay. And now, even after decades, every time I am at Brigade I recall that episode.?

It was through dealer panels I discovered Mysore’s street of haute couture, Pondicherry’s Gare-du-avant-garde (French copywriters may revert with abuses), Coimbatore’s road of raging style, and Banjara Hills’ catwalk. Whenever I went to these cities, and whenever I was at these places, I smiled to myself and muttered the phone number of the store—that’s how many times one checks these panels.?

Sigh, good old days.?