mumbai ad man actor theatre personality and activist gerson da cunha 92 passed away in mumbai on friday after a brief illness starting off as a journalist he moved to the ad world spending 25 years and going on to head lintas among the most formidable names in the industry then da cunha who had a stint with unicef was also associated with several platforms engaged in civic activism including agni helping citizens understand civic issues and motivating them to get involvedgerson da cunha and i were family friends and we were born a month apart i was born in may 1929 and gerson was born in june of the same year he was a few days younger than me i have known him since my school days though we went to different schools he went to st marys in mazagaon close to his house i went to st xaviers in dhobi talao but we knew each other from a very young age we are bombay goans as they call us in goa his family probably settled in bombay much before mine my family has been here for 200 years we came in the time of the british i think his family came here during the portuguese era they had settled in mazagaon gerson and his brother sylvester were both in st xaviers college gerson had been in theatre since his college days then i remember he graduated to a higher form of theatre and he used to be a great friend of alyque padamsee they were both in theatre and later on worked together in the advertising agency lintas gersons interest in theatre led him to his marriage with uma who was a film critic gerson used to accompany her to the cannes film festival every year later we were told that gersons heart was pumping at a much slower rate but he would not let this daunt him or keep him from going abroad every yeargerson also did a stint outside india with the un in brazil he was sent there because he spoke portuguese very well he was there for a few years later both of us joined hands in activism gerson ran the ngo agni my friend and former municipal commissioner d m sukthankar was also involved with agni since his retirement we used to take up causes to ensure that people were not taken for a ride of late our work had increased but even during the time of the congress we used to fight the injustices meted out by the government the last time the three of us got together was in 2005 when we filed a pil against people who were calling for bandhs bandhs are not allowed and they inconvenience everyone including small children who dont get their milk and migrant labourers who dont get a meal as they eat out in restaurants daily we had gone to court on this issue and managed to get the two political parties that had