As a young aspirant journalist, cartoons of R K Laxman facinated me like anything. In fact I learned from his cartoons that how we can put straight facts without offending some one . That was the reason as a boy in small town Moradabad, I used to buy Times of India instead of Hindustan Times though at that time TOI was not serving any
news masala as weekly Blitz or Current. The first thing in my morning paper, I search for the Laxman's strip. There were few exceptional days when his cartoon was missing, I feel something important missing in my paper. When I visited Mumbai for the first time, meeting with Laxman was a part of my itinerary ! When I met him,I was expecting a very towering and stylish personality but honestly I could not believe that such a simple man can be so witty and creative work. First time, I stayed with him for half an hour or so, in the meantime, he received a number of calls, few of them were from very powerful, heavy weight politicians, he attended with ease without showing any attitude.I met him on few more occasions after moving Mumbai, always found him a very simple person. Not surprising his main protagonist is known as common man in which a reader can find his own reflection.Probably he was the first cartoonist who was honored by the biggest bank of India SBI to use his cartoons on its Calendar.
On number of occasions, I saw him walking up the stairs to Times Office and had no use for the lift. A brisk, no-nonsense man, Laxman in his white, short-sleeved crisp shirt and black trousers was as much a trademark of the newspaper as was his cartoon of the Common Man with a moustache and spectacles. His devastating humour trashed politicians while looking at the pathetic plight of common persons who still do not have the basic necessities. His humor did not always make you laugh: it was often grim, ironic, and impaled politicians for their generally corrupt and exploitative ways. Laxman’s association with The Times of India, spanning over five decades, must rank as something of a record of its kind. For a reader like me Times and Laxman became one single entity.His ‘Common Man’ cartoons are in many ways a better chronicle of some aspects of India’s independent history than the “first draft of history” that newspaper front pages are said to be. Political upheavals, space research, price rise, joblessness, life on the footpath, slum-dwellers, changing cities, water scarcity — those were just a few amongst thousands of subjects he covered. But the travails of the everyday citizen were those he returned to quite often. Yet, Laxman’s Common Man never spoke out in his cartoons. The cartoonist was to say in 2002 of his Common Man: “He remains the same and has not spoken a word. Quietly watching the world, he represents the silent majority of India, who have no voice.” Laxman also kept a sharp eye out on what the newspapers were writing, often complaining about silly errors which he would circle with a thick black pen. Those dropping in on him at his office would be regaled with the stories behind those errors. Another thing you would find him doing if you dropped in unannounced at his cabin was Laxman drawing crows. He may well have done hundreds of sketches of crows, which he considered “a most intelligent bird.” Crows, he would also point out, were the subject of many tales in Indian folklore. As he said once, “Crows are very intelligent creatures and that’s my art. Not cartooning. I love my crows. I draw them whenever I find the time.”
Early Days He was born as Rasipuram Krishnaswamy Laxman on October 24, 1921 in princely state of Mysore. The youngest of six brothers, Laxman had as his older brother, the legendary R.K. Narayan, the creator of Malgudi. Admonished by one of his siblings never to copy from the many magazines that he used to read in the house, Laxman impressed his school teacher with a drawing of a peepul leaf. He later drew a caricature of his father sitting in an armchair, using a piece of chalk on the ground, much to his parent’s horror. Laxman inspired his brother’s writing instincts early in life. R.K. Narayan’s Dodu, the Money Maker, based on Laxman, won him a literary award. In an essay in January 18-31, 1992 issue of Frontline Laxman wrote: “I did not know that Narayan was a writer, till one day the postman delivered a magazine called
The Merry Magazine. An announcement in it said that Narayan had won a literary prize for his short story, Dodu, the Money Maker. The story was about a boy struggling for financial independence from his elders so that he could buy groundnuts from an old woman selling them under a tree — whenever he felt like it. I was excited because the plot had a remote suggestion of my own activities and needs as a boy of eight. Besides, the hero bore my name!” He sketched for his brother’s stories which were published in The Hindu, and his novels too. While Narayan worked his way towards becoming India’s leading writer, Laxman was busy sketching. “While all this was going on, my own creative urge was driving me in another direction. I used to visit, with sketch-pad and pencil in hand, the crowded localities of Mysore like the Town Hall compound, the city square, public parks and the vegetable market in order to sketch people in action, study their faces, their dresses, their postures and other characteristics. My sketch-book was filled with drawings of whatever caught my fancy including the local railway station, weather-beaten houses, ruminating cows, meditative donkeys, schoolchildren, lawyers, passengers at the bus terminus and so on,” he writes in the Frontline essay, which was titled O, brother! It was in The Hindu, too, that Laxman saw the name of Sir David Low, the political cartoonist from Evening Standard, London, who has inspired people around the globe. Laxman was much struck by his work and it was a high point in his life to meet him while working at The Times of India in Mumbai in 1952.
Struggle While the death of his father, a headmaster, early in life was a setback, Laxman, never one for school, chose drawing and painting as special subjects. He later became a cartoonist for a popular Kannada magazine called Koravanji, published from Bangalore. His sketches were displayed along with prominent painters from Mysore and he managed to win an award for pencil drawings of his nephew, called Glimpses of Thumbi. He sketched his brother’s stories while still at the Maharaja’s College, Mysore, studying politics, economics and philosophy. He drew political cartoons for Swatantra, edited by Khasa Subba Rao. For six months he was part of an animated film unit at Gemini Studios in Madras before shifting to Mumbai. Thanks to failing in Kannada he could not continue his studies for a while, something which broke his heart. Consolation came again from his brother Narayan who became an English novelist despite failing an entrance examination in the subject. Now averse to college degrees, Laxman decided on a Diploma in Fine Arts and applied to J.J. School of Arts in Mumbai. To his dismay he was told that he did not have the talent to qualify. Much later, after he made his name as a cartoonist in The Times, the same J.J. School of Arts felicitated him, as a chief guest, much to his amusement. Laxman did not forgive the Dean, though he thanked him for the rejection saying he had become a cartoonist as a result and was not languishing in some advertising agency writing jingles. After trying his luck in various newspapers, he was finally introduced to the Editor of Blitz in Mumbai. Some of Laxman’s earliest work on arriving in Mumbai was done for R.K. Karanjia’s Blitz. Laxman never forgot that break and Karanjia’s table would, decades later, often sport the original of a Laxman cartoon that Karanjia had liked. Laxman was to write a tribute to that relationship in Blitz’s 50th anniversary issue in 1991. One of the classics that adorned Karanjia’s table was the cartoonist’s take on the exit as Maharashtra Chief Minister of the late Babasaheb Bhosale. Bhosale was Chief Minister for less than 14 months — with every week bringing rumours of his removal. Dissidents seeking his removal were advised by the High Command that the “time was not right” just yet. Laxman had the rotund Bhosale as a large and rather nervous-looking Ganesh idol about to be immersed by a rowdy bunch of Congressmen — with one senior leader asking them to wait as the time was not right just yet. He also worked with the Free Press Journal in 1946 as a political cartoonist, where his colleague was none other than a young Bal Thackeray, also an admirer of David Low and an aspiring political cartoonist. Darryl D’Monte, former resident editor of The Times of India, Mumbai, recalls a popular story at that time that Thackeray started the Shiv Sena because Laxman was a better cartoonist. He did a variety of jobs for the paper, far beyond what the salary justified, including producing a political cartoon every alternate day. “I used to sit bent over my drawing board for nearly ten hours a day,” according to Laxman Laxman left the Free Press Journal over differences with his bosses and came to The Times of India in 1947 on a princely salary of Rs. 500 doing illustrations for the Illustrated Weekly of India and comic strips for a children’s magazine. Ironically, The Times’ editor did not initially encourage Laxman’s genius as a political cartoonist and his first cartoon appeared in the Evening News of India, the group’s tabloid. Soon, his cartoons made it to The Times of India’s front page, where they stayed for decades. He became the paper’s chief political cartoonist. His ‘You Said It’ series of pocket cartoons took shape later, and he was even offered a post at the Evening Standard in London. Laxman was married to the writer Kamala and has a son Srinivas, who had also worked with The Times of India. Darryl D’Monte, worked with Laxman at The Times of India. He shared an occasion - there was a lead story on the ceiling on agricultural land being lifted. He had sent a cartoon showing a slab being lowered on a bewildered farmer. “I thought it was too literal, but Laxman called it back and quickly drew a politician sitting on the slab looking down at the farmer triumphantly. It was just that touch, that genius for converting a literal illustration into really something that made you smile. It was the pocket cartoon and common man that people identified with. He has done so many illustration, it’s an amazing output of work,” D’Monte adds. The citation as part of the Ramon Magsaysay award, which Laxman received in 1984, said: “The preface to an early volume, reprinted in six editions, gives the flavour of his occupation: ‘A cartoonist works for an industry in which time is of the essence. The Damocles’ sword of deadline rules his days, which for him follow one another in a bewildering order of importance: tomato shortage, nuclear threat, five-year plan, potholes, corruption, monsoon forecast, adulterated drugs, prohibition and mission to the moon ....” Laxman’s trademark is his portrait of the Common Man — a small figure with a bulbous nose, caterpillar eyebrows, the bushy hair behind the ears below a bald pate, and a moustache like a brush. His dress is unchanging — a dhoti, long shirt and checked coat. His mien suggests a determined staying power. As his creator wrote: “You cannot do away with the Common Man. They have tried it for centuries and not succeeded... he is the mirror image [of millions of readers]... the conscience that pricks the evildoer, the social offender, the practitioner of all those trades which we might have liked to practice but for fear of the police, if not of God.”
Fighter He won many awards, including the Padma Bhushan and the Padma Vibhushan. Laxman suffered a stroke in 2003 but that did not put him out of action. He continued working with one hand, although the lines were not as sharp, and the Times sent someone home to pick up the cartoons. He had moved to Pune since a while with his wife. People invariably connected with the Common Man, and Laxman’s work represented the bewilderment of the poor, contrasting it with the corruption of the ruling classes. His work will always bring a smile or draw a laugh and make you realise the grim irony and unchanging nature of the world we live in.
As a young aspirant journalist, cartoons of R K Laxman facinated me like anything. In fact I learned from his cartoons that how we can put straight facts without offending some one . That was the reason as a boy in small town Moradabad, I used to buy Times of India instead of Hindustan Times though at that time TOI was not serving any news masala as weekly Blitz or Current. The first thing in my morning paper, I search for the Laxman's strip. There were few exceptional days when his cartoon was missing, I feel something important missing in my paper. When I visited Mumbai for the first time, meeting with Laxman was a part of my itinerary ! When I met him,I was expecting a very towering and stylish personality but honestly I could not believe that such a simple man can be so witty and creative work. First time, I stayed with him for half an hour or so, in the meantime, he received a number of calls, few of them were from very powerful, heavy weight politicians, he attended with ease without showing any attitude.I met him on few more occasions after moving Mumbai, always found him a very simple person. Not surprising his main protagonist is known as common man in which a reader can find his own reflection.Probably he was the first cartoonist who was honored by the biggest bank of India SBI to use his cartoons on its Calendar. 
On number of occasions, I saw him walking up the stairs to Times Office and had no use for the lift. A brisk, no-nonsense man, Laxman in his white, short-sleeved crisp shirt and black trousers was as much a trademark of the newspaper as was his cartoon of the Common Man with a moustache and spectacles. His devastating humour trashed politicians while looking at the pathetic plight of common persons who still do not have the basic necessities. His humor did not always make you laugh: it was often grim, ironic, and impaled politicians for their generally corrupt and exploitative ways. Laxman’s association with The Times of India, spanning over five decades, must rank as something of a record of its kind. For a reader like me Times and Laxman became one single entity.His ‘Common Man’ cartoons are in many ways a better chronicle of some aspects of India’s independent history than the “first draft of history” that newspaper front pages are said to be. Political upheavals, space research, price rise, joblessness, life on the footpath, slum-dwellers, changing cities, water scarcity — those were just a few amongst thousands of subjects he covered. But the travails of the everyday citizen were those he returned to quite often. Yet, Laxman’s Common Man never spoke out in his cartoons. The cartoonist was to say in 2002 of his Common Man: “He remains the same and has not spoken a word. Quietly watching the world, he represents the silent majority of India, who have no voice.” Laxman also kept a sharp eye out on what the newspapers were writing, often complaining about silly errors which he would circle with a thick black pen. Those dropping in on him at his office would be regaled with the stories behind those errors. Another thing you would find him doing if you dropped in unannounced at his cabin was Laxman drawing crows. He may well have done hundreds of sketches of crows, which he considered “a most intelligent bird.” Crows, he would also point out, were the subject of many tales in Indian folklore. As he said once, “Crows are very intelligent creatures and that’s my art. Not cartooning. I love my crows. I draw them whenever I find the time.” Early Days He was born as Rasipuram Krishnaswamy Laxman on October 24, 1921 in princely state of Mysore. The youngest of six brothers, Laxman had as his older brother, the legendary R.K. Narayan, the creator of Malgudi. Admonished by one of his siblings never to copy from the many magazines that he used to read in the house, Laxman impressed his school teacher with a drawing of a peepul leaf. He later drew a caricature of his father sitting in an armchair, using a piece of chalk on the ground, much to his parent’s horror. Laxman inspired his brother’s writing instincts early in life. R.K. Narayan’s Dodu, the Money Maker, based on Laxman, won him a literary award. In an essay in January 18-31, 1992 issue of Frontline Laxman wrote: “I did not know that Narayan was a writer, till one day the postman delivered a magazine called The Merry Magazine. An announcement in it said that Narayan had won a literary prize for his short story, Dodu, the Money Maker. The story was about a boy struggling for financial independence from his elders so that he could buy groundnuts from an old woman selling them under a tree — whenever he felt like it. I was excited because the plot had a remote suggestion of my own activities and needs as a boy of eight. Besides, the hero bore my name!” He sketched for his brother’s stories which were published in The Hindu, and his novels too. While Narayan worked his way towards becoming India’s leading writer, Laxman was busy sketching. “While all this was going on, my own creative urge was driving me in another direction. I used to visit, with sketch-pad and pencil in hand, the crowded localities of Mysore like the Town Hall compound, the city square, public parks and the vegetable market in order to sketch people in action, study their faces, their dresses, their postures and other characteristics. My sketch-book was filled with drawings of whatever caught my fancy including the local railway station, weather-beaten houses, ruminating cows, meditative donkeys, schoolchildren, lawyers, passengers at the bus terminus and so on,” he writes in the Frontline essay, which was titled O, brother! It was in The Hindu, too, that Laxman saw the name of Sir David Low, the political cartoonist from Evening Standard, London, who has inspired people around the globe. Laxman was much struck by his work and it was a high point in his life to meet him while working at The Times of India in Mumbai in 1952. Struggle While the death of his father, a headmaster, early in life was a setback, Laxman, never one for school, chose drawing and painting as special subjects. He later became a cartoonist for a popular Kannada magazine called Koravanji, published from Bangalore. His sketches were displayed along with prominent painters from Mysore and he managed to win an award for pencil drawings of his nephew, called Glimpses of Thumbi. He sketched his brother’s stories while still at the Maharaja’s College, Mysore, studying politics, economics and philosophy. He drew political cartoons for Swatantra, edited by Khasa Subba Rao. For six months he was part of an animated film unit at Gemini Studios in Madras before shifting to Mumbai. Thanks to failing in Kannada he could not continue his studies for a while, something which broke his heart. Consolation came again from his brother Narayan who became an English novelist despite failing an entrance examination in the subject. Now averse to college degrees, Laxman decided on a Diploma in Fine Arts and applied to J.J. School of Arts in Mumbai. To his dismay he was told that he did not have the talent to qualify. Much later, after he made his name as a cartoonist in The Times, the same J.J. School of Arts felicitated him, as a chief guest, much to his amusement. Laxman did not forgive the Dean, though he thanked him for the rejection saying he had become a cartoonist as a result and was not languishing in some advertising agency writing jingles. After trying his luck in various newspapers, he was finally introduced to the Editor of Blitz in Mumbai. Some of Laxman’s earliest work on arriving in Mumbai was done for R.K. Karanjia’s Blitz. Laxman never forgot that break and Karanjia’s table would, decades later, often sport the original of a Laxman cartoon that Karanjia had liked. Laxman was to write a tribute to that relationship in Blitz’s 50th anniversary issue in 1991. One of the classics that adorned Karanjia’s table was the cartoonist’s take on the exit as Maharashtra Chief Minister of the late Babasaheb Bhosale. Bhosale was Chief Minister for less than 14 months — with every week bringing rumours of his removal. Dissidents seeking his removal were advised by the High Command that the “time was not right” just yet. Laxman had the rotund Bhosale as a large and rather nervous-looking Ganesh idol about to be immersed by a rowdy bunch of Congressmen — with one senior leader asking them to wait as the time was not right just yet. He also worked with the Free Press Journal in 1946 as a political cartoonist, where his colleague was none other than a young Bal Thackeray, also an admirer of David Low and an aspiring political cartoonist. Darryl D’Monte, former resident editor of The Times of India, Mumbai, recalls a popular story at that time that Thackeray started the Shiv Sena because Laxman was a better cartoonist. He did a variety of jobs for the paper, far beyond what the salary justified, including producing a political cartoon every alternate day. “I used to sit bent over my drawing board for nearly ten hours a day,” according to Laxman Laxman left the Free Press Journal over differences with his bosses and came to The Times of India in 1947 on a princely salary of Rs. 500 doing illustrations for the Illustrated Weekly of India and comic strips for a children’s magazine. Ironically, The Times’ editor did not initially encourage Laxman’s genius as a political cartoonist and his first cartoon appeared in the Evening News of India, the group’s tabloid. Soon, his cartoons made it to The Times of India’s front page, where they stayed for decades. He became the paper’s chief political cartoonist. His ‘You Said It’ series of pocket cartoons took shape later, and he was even offered a post at the Evening Standard in London. Laxman was married to the writer Kamala and has a son Srinivas, who had also worked with The Times of India. Darryl D’Monte, worked with Laxman at The Times of India. He shared an occasion - there was a lead story on the ceiling on agricultural land being lifted. He had sent a cartoon showing a slab being lowered on a bewildered farmer. “I thought it was too literal, but Laxman called it back and quickly drew a politician sitting on the slab looking down at the farmer triumphantly. It was just that touch, that genius for converting a literal illustration into really something that made you smile. It was the pocket cartoon and common man that people identified with. He has done so many illustration, it’s an amazing output of work,” D’Monte adds. The citation as part of the Ramon Magsaysay award, which Laxman received in 1984, said: “The preface to an early volume, reprinted in six editions, gives the flavour of his occupation: ‘A cartoonist works for an industry in which time is of the essence. The Damocles’ sword of deadline rules his days, which for him follow one another in a bewildering order of importance: tomato shortage, nuclear threat, five-year plan, potholes, corruption, monsoon forecast, adulterated drugs, prohibition and mission to the moon ....” Laxman’s trademark is his portrait of the Common Man — a small figure with a bulbous nose, caterpillar eyebrows, the bushy hair behind the ears below a bald pate, and a moustache like a brush. His dress is unchanging — a dhoti, long shirt and checked coat. His mien suggests a determined staying power. As his creator wrote: “You cannot do away with the Common Man. They have tried it for centuries and not succeeded... he is the mirror image [of millions of readers]... the conscience that pricks the evildoer, the social offender, the practitioner of all those trades which we might have liked to practice but for fear of the police, if not of God.” Fighter He won many awards, including the Padma Bhushan and the Padma Vibhushan. Laxman suffered a stroke in 2003 but that did not put him out of action. He continued working with one hand, although the lines were not as sharp, and the Times sent someone home to pick up the cartoons. He had moved to Pune since a while with his wife. People invariably connected with the Common Man, and Laxman’s work represented the bewilderment of the poor, contrasting it with the corruption of the ruling classes. His work will always bring a smile or draw a laugh and make you realise the grim irony and unchanging nature of the world we live in.
.jpg "A Gumnam Actress Strips Nude to Protest Auto/taxi Fare Hike")
