Wednesday 21 January 2015

R.K. Laxman: Common Man Remembers

I was born in the fifties while my creator R K Laxman was a newcomer to Times of India, as part of his pocket cartoon series 'You Said It'. Though he stopped drawing quite a while ago due to various ailments and died recently, I continue to remain well entrenched in the imagination of most Indians.
 

I was the result of my master's endavour to create a pan Indian identity of the common man. He felt there was no single attribute common to all Indians. Hence he created me, 'a mythical character in a striped coat, with a bushy moustache, a bald head with a white wisp of hair at the back, a bulbous nose on which is perched a pair of glasses, and my thick black eyebrows permanently raised, expressing bewilderment'. I have to bear witness to the amusement, the ironies, paradoxes and contradictions of the human situation in the Indian society. He also created my wife, who too sometimes is present during such amusing exchanges. As a couple we have remained ageless and look the same ever since creation.
 

Although the caricatures my master drew and the one liners he penned had the nation in splits tremendous effort went behind it. Every day my master used to leave for office with butterflies in his stomach, almost convinced that he may not get any idea for cartoon. After reaching office he used to pore over newspapers and worry that there was no news worthy of a cartoon. His cabin used to be out of bounds for idle chit chats. However, as the 4.30 pm deadline neared he would be a relieved man giving finishing touches to the day's pocket cartoon. This used to be his typical working day.
 

Politicians' double talk, their broken election promises; civic issues such as water shortage, price rise, garbage pile up and lack of civic sense were his pet subjects. His was an affable humour without malice, unlike the Charlie Hebdo kind. He felt that 'dignified irreverence' was the most important quality a cartoonist ought to have.

He claimed that he found Indian politics very interesting as it gave plenty of ideas and a variety of characters, while he found their counterparts in West boring in their 'grey suits'. This cartoon series remained immune to all the twists and convulsion the Old Lady of Bori Bunder underwent ostensibly to keep up with the times, and retained its pristine charm. 
 

However as drawing cartoons involved ridiculing people my master was no stranger to hate mails, run-ins with some politicians and also the law. Among politicians Morarji Desai had sounded to him that he was not happy with his cartoons. 

Sadly as time passes memories fade or even mutate. Some now mistake me for being a long lost cousin of cartoon character chacha chaudhri or even a caricature of BJP patriarch L.K. Advani.



Also Read: Bangalore Beat




Monday 12 January 2015

B. G. Verghese: An Embodiment of a More Dignified Era

While TV talking heads were recently splitting hairs over the appropriateness of timing of Dhoni's retirement, a famous journalist of yesteryears quietly 'passed away' causing a minor blip in the media's radar - a mere mention in the ticker of some TV channels and 'briefly' column in the inside pages of newspapers. For many even in the media it was B.G. Verghese who?
 

It may be upsetting to some, but not very surprising as the type of journalism Verghese and his peers practised is now a lost genre. It was far more nuanced, sober and shorn of present day narcissism and shrillness of 24/7 media. News reports were free from editorialising (it was strictly the domain of edit pages), glib packaging and of course paid news.
 

While in the mid 1970s journalism was subjected to a litmus test under Emergency, Verghese was one of the few honourable exceptions who did not 'crawl when asked to bend'. As Hindustan Times editor he was given marching orders for criticising Emergency. In fact for the HT management it was the proverbial last straw – they were itching to do so after he had earlier criticised India’s annexation of Sikkim. 
 

In the early eighties when I started exploring newspapers beyond cricket scores and comic strips to its far more rarefied spaces like edit and op ed pages, Verghese happened to be the editor of Indian Express. For India 1984 was a nightmare year starting with Operation Bluestar, Indira Gandhi's assassination and Bhopal gas tragedy. During anti-Sikh riots it was Indian Express which brought to limelight the infamous Trilokpuri massacre, thanks to some intrepid reporting by Rahul Bedi and Joseph Maliakan,  with Verghese backing them to the hilt.
 

After Verghese retired from Indian Express in 1986 he continued to be very active with his columns appearing in various publications and he was associated with Centre for Policy Research. He also penned some books and figured as member of various committees constituted by the government - probably the last notable one being the one to review Kargil war.
 

Though he always championed the cause of downtrodden his support for big dams raised many eyebrows. He had opposed the Narmada dam agitation spearheaded by Medha Patkar and even got into a long drawn but dignified debate with Arundhati Roy. He felt that despite displacement of population dams were beneficial in the long run.
 

With his demise and that of Kushwant Singh and M. V. Kamath recently, an era is drawing to a close. Kuldip Nayar and T J S George are probably the only notables of that generation who are still alive.

Also Read: Bangalore Beat