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.



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