One can almost imagine the ‘Common Man’ scratching his
balding head and his crow cawing away a commentary over the events of the day,
India’s 66th Republic Day, an affair of much pomp and celebration. The creator
of that much loved and closely followed figure, Rasipuram Krishnaswamy Iyer
Laxman, better known as R K Laxman, breathed his last at a Pune hospital on
Sunday evening, after a prolonged illness.
With his long career as staff cartoonist of The Times of
India, Laxman is considered the foremost chronicler of India’s political
history. His most enduring contribution to the annals of cartooning is
undoubtedly the ‘Common Man’ character and the pocket cartoon series, ‘You Said
It’, that popularised political cartoons and satire since everyone's
grandfather was a child. Laxman, who hailed from Mysore in Karnataka, was a
creative genius who started early, drawing inspiration from looking at
illustrations in magazines such as Punch and Bystander. The budding artist even
took to drawing on the floors and walls of his house; one of his earliest
targets for caricaturing were his school teachers.
Turned away by Mumbai’s JJ School of Art, ironically on
grounds of lack of talent, Laxman graduated from the University of Mysore. By
then, he had also started to draw illustrations for his equally illustrious
brother R K Narayan’s stories, along with making political cartoons for some
Kannada magazines.
Laxman joined The Times of India in the early 1950s and it
remained his workplace for the next five decades. It was here that he
immortalised the Common Man, with the characteristic checked coat and bemused
expression as he observed life and politics in India.
From petty politicians to all-powerful premiers, Laxman’s
keen eye and deft lines spared none, bringing droll smiles to hapless millions
caught in the quagmire of ineffectual governance.
As Time magazine remarked in a review of a book of his
cartoons: “For half a century, The Times of India has thoughtfully provided an
antidote to all the bad news brimming on its front pages. It’s a sketch, a
single box, inked by R K Laxman, the country’s sharpest cartoonist and
political satirist. Each morning, Laxman’s frazzled character, known as the
Common Man, confronts India’s latest heartbreak with a kind of wry resignation.
Meek, doddering and with a moustache that bristles like an electrocuted
mongoose, he’s a witness to everything: Scheming politicians, rapacious
bureaucrats and gossiping housewives. What’s common about this character is
that like most Indians, he sees his country being forced through endless
indignities by its leaders and yet doesn’t even whimper in protest.”
When Ritu Gairola Khanduri interviewed cartoonists for her
recently published book, Caricaturing culture in India: Cartoons and History in
the Modern World, no conversation was complete without some reference to
Laxman. “That should give us some measure of his stature in the profession,”
she says.
Khanduri first met Laxman in 2003, where he emphasised that
he was an artist and a political analyst. “Laxman’s immaculate drawing,
simplicity of ideas and topicality that daily cartoons demand made his cartoon
the snapshot of the news of the day. His
insistence that a cartoon be a work of excellent draftsmanship and convey a
political perspective came to define political cartooning in India,” she says.
His art and observations, benign rebukes more often than
coarse condemnations, made his cartoons a significant and lasting part of our
political culture. “Laxman’s cartoons became entwined with life in India. His
cartoons did not merely record and reflect events, they also shaped life in
India,” says Khanduri. “Laxman’s cartoon’s gently revealed the paradox of
democracy and developmental agendas.” Repeatedly caricaturing public
frustration with bureaucratic failure, Laxman sparked an everyday critique of
government machinery. “Of course, this did not inspire revolt but it gave
cartoons an important role in our daily ritual performance of complaint,” she
says.
His Common Man character was brand ambassador of the now
defunct Deccan Air. It had promised to make air travel economical for the
general public and its owner, Captain Gopinath, showed Khanduri the cartoon
that inspired him to conceptualise Deccan Air, eventually also choosing
Laxman’s character as his airline’s mascot.
His cartoons had a broad appeal and could evoke a range of
emotions, from laughter to tears, effectively conveying the depth of news
without its superfluousness. His cartoons were translated in many Indian
languages and catalogued in coffee table books as well as affordable
paperbacks, establishing their immense popularity in the entire country. Laxman
was undoubtedly the only true star of Indian cartooning. One amateur cartoonist
Khanduri met in Mumbai explained to her that Laxman was the “Lata Mangeshkar of
Indian cartooning.”
“We all grew up with Laxman. Our interest in cartoons was
inspired only from him,” says Keshav Venkataraghavan, staff cartoonist of The
Hindu. “We used to draw his cartoons and practice. His cartoons were laced with
satire and humour in a way that even the person who was his target used to
enjoy them.” Laxman, he says, was a fan of David Low and moulded himself to the
standards set by Low. “The Common Man is legendary now because it converted the
anger of the common man into humour — that was the secret of its success. It
went one step ahead of anger,” says Venkataraghavan.
Laxman was a great dramatist as well. “He conceptualised and
scripted shows such as the wonderful Wagle ki Duniya. His humour was subtle and
natural, not a sledgehammer invective,” says Venkataraghavan. “Once, during a
chance meeting at Pilani, I asked him to give some words of advice to young
cartoonists such as myself. He responded with a beautiful coinage: ‘Cartoonists
should have a dignified irreverence.’ And, that has formed the intrinsic credo
of his cartooning, and a lifelong motto for all of us.”
Ajit Ninan, former cartoonist of India Today and Outlook,
and who is now with The Times of India, once declared Laxman his favourite
cartoonist in the country, in an interview for Star of Mysore,“because he was a
typical South Indian genius. He was a big crowd-puller and by nature he was
funny, sharp and witty”.
Laxman’s unrivalled success and popularity as India’s
premier cartoonist did not spare him critics. Who have, on occasion, pointed
out his hesitation in striking a bold position on politics.
Laxman suffered a stroke in 1993 and later retired from
active work. But for millions of us, who grew up on a daily diet rich with dry
witticisms and astute observations on the country’s problems and politicians,
his cartoons will remain inked on our memories. Describing his beloved Common
Man in an interview to Outlook, Laxman once said: “My Common Man is
omnipresent. His simple dhotiand checked coat could be anybody’s. His bald head
could belong anywhere... his dhoti could be the Malayali mundu, too. He’s been
silent all these 50 years. He simply listens.” - Source Times of India
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