BackR.K. Laxman: You said it the best
Independent India's conscience keeper has bid goodbye
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Between 1951, when he started his trademark pocket cartoon in The Times of India, and 2003, when a stroke left him paralysed, R.K. Laxman was perhaps the only journalist in India assured of a front-page slot.
Each day Laxman won over his readers’ heart, regaled them with his wit and yet left them with something to introspect. For several generations of Indians, it was second nature to first look at Laxman’s You Said It cartoon before even reading the top headline. His cartoons stood out for their sharp wit, stinging satire and nuanced portrayal of India’s public life.
There can be no better recollection of Indian political life than a compilation of Laxman cartoons. It is a tribute to his astute ability to spot the real issue at hand that his cartoons are considered timeless. For instance, early in his career, he mocked the potholed roads of Mumbai—his city of work—by drawing an astronomer looking at the moon’s craters and deducing the existence of civic life. Laxman never missed an opportunity to hold up a mirror to society. Sample this conversation among a mass of rural protesters blocking railway lines discussing among themselves: “This holdup may not bring fair prices for farm products but it has averted at least a train accident for a while."
Laxman had the innate ability to look at the humorous side of even a grim situation. While surveying a blood-stained Pakistani bunker in the aftermath of the 1965 war, Laxman could not help noticing how the stray dogs in the area boldly strode past the border to come to the Indian bunker, which was preparing food.
Since childhood, Laxman was obsessed with sketching. Bored by the dull routine of schooling, his fertile imagination often made him see beyond his unknowing subject, and draw what he perceived to be his true character. For instance, he sketched his disciplinarian father as a Roman senator, and once drew his demanding maths teacher as a tiger cub. It was this childlike obsession with his craft that led to Laxman approaching Indira Gandhi during the Emergency and complain about his cartoons being unjustly censored by the government.
That is not to say that Laxman did not have a healthy irreverence for the people in authority. Once he requested V.K. Krishna Menon to sign a sketch of his. Menon refused because he felt the sketch did not do justice to him and, instead, offered to sign another piece of paper. Laxman immediately refused saying, “No thank you, sir. The autograph has no value to me unless it is on the caricature I have made."
Laxman had frequent run-ins with several politicians, including Morarji Desai. Desai’s penchant for imposing prohibition on everything from alcohol to horse racing to even crossword puzzles was regularly lampooned in Laxman’s cartoons. Once Desai, at that time chief minister of the old Bombay state, even summoned a cabinet meeting to stop Laxman’s cartoons. Laxman often said politicians appeared to be to behaving as if they were perpetually modelling for the cartoonist. He was acutely aware of the lax political accountability in the country and thoroughly enjoyed puncturing the politician’s ego, exposing double standards.
However, he never resorted to pettiness and vulgarity to achieve his goal. For instance, unlike many in his trade, he never sketched anyone as an animal. But his genius lay in the ability to find the right metaphor, the apt imagery to convey a sentiment. In 1981, when Y.B. Chavan rejoined the Indira Gandhi faction of the Congress, Laxman sketched his homecoming by showing him entering through the dog flap, instead of the main door.
Notwithstanding his peerless artistic acumen, Laxman was entirely self taught. The closest he came to a teacher was Sir David Low, famous for chronicling the tempestuous events in European politics during the 1930s. Low was a master of subtle satire and Laxman followed his work while Low was the political cartoonist at London’s Evening Standard. Another influence on the cartoonist was his elder brother, and acclaimed writer, R.K. Narayan. The two collaborated on several occasions—Laxman’s sketches, especially in Malgudi Days, brought the characters of Narayan’s novels to life. In fact, some of Narayan’s stories, such as Dodu the Monkey Maker, were based on Laxman’s childhood exploits.
Towards the end of his career, Laxman bemoaned the advent of soulless computer-generated cartoons.
He also felt the blatant corruption in India’s public life robbed the cartoonist of his subject. There was no one left to expose. “The whole affair was a caricature in itself…There was no need or a cartoonist," he wrote in his autobiography.
Laxman was independent India’s conscience keeper—using the brush and ink to slay bigotry, hypocrisy, falsehood, and publicly admonish the guilty.
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