THE UNCOMMON `COMMAN MAN’ CREATURE R K LAXMAN BIRTH CENTENARY
Today is the Centenary Birth Anniversary of one and the only
peerless Rasipuram Krishnaswami Laxman better known as R K LAXMAN. 
A cartoonist of par excellence blessed with
unlimited knowledge and imaginary power.
His Common Man and Cartoons under the `You Said It’ series in
Times of India which ran for over half a century uninterrupted in Times of
India is a sort of world record. . He always covered contemporary issues and
presented them through the eyes of his Common Man. For over 3 decades my day always started with
seeing and enjoying his cartoon and i must admit not even a single day i was
disappointed by his cartoon. I used to
cut his cartoons from news paper and paste on a paper and maintain many
editions of files
Early Days
RK Laxman was born in Mysore on 24th October,
1921. He developed interest in cartoons
from an early age. At a young
age, he began drawing on his own on the floors, walls and doors of the house. While as a college student, he illustrated his
older brother R K Naraya’s stories in leading news paper The Hindu. Later he joined in a job as a political
cartoonist in The Free Press Journal alongside Bal Thackeray, who too was a
cartoonist before he turned to politics, later he joined The Times of
India in 1951 which association stayed for over half a century. Besides his daily cartoons in ToI, he drew
illustrations and cartoons for Tamil and Hindi movies and famous TV serials
like `Malgudi Days written by his illustrious brother R K Narayanan
and `Wagle
ki Duniya’
What made RK
Laxman cartoon so popular?
Normally cartoonists tend to be silly and type casted and their success rate in generating humour or sarcasms and making people think is 1 out of 10. But in case of RK Laxman almost every cartoon coming from his stable was of high quality, witty, humourous, sarcastic and used to make us think.
His `common man’ is one of the most enduring cartoon characters symbolising the daily predicament of every Indian. Another feature of his cartoons was that most of them were timeless – the proof of it is for last 2 months or so ToI is re-running his cartoons and what he drew some 30-40 years back still have relevance even today. His cartoon were so enjoyable by one and all that in his long and illustrious career of over half a century he never ran into any controversy and no politician or political party has every objected to any of his cartoons which used to take on their government and its policies
Though RK Laxman was predominantly political cartoonist, he was equally good in other
subjects. He did cartoon for Indian
Management Association and ICSI magazines for some times and drew such lovely
cartoons on Management principles and corporate world. There
was a series of books of RK Laxman Cartoons on different subjects.
Laxman published numerous short stories, essays, and travel
articles, some of which were collected in The
Distorted Mirror. He also wrote the novels `The Hotel Riviera’,
`The Messenger’
and an autobiography, `The Tunnel of Time’. Other
collections of his cartoons were published in The Best of Laxman and Laugh with
Laxman by Penguin Books India. His comic strip `You Said It’ served as the basis for a television comedy series
titled `RK Laxman Ki Duniya’ In 2011, the Symbiosis International
University named a chair at its Pune campus in Laxman’s honour.
Recognition
and Reward
Though RK Laxman was reserved and used to keep to himself and his work, he
was extremely popular amongst cartoonist fraternity, politician spectrum and general public. He was conferred with Padma Bhushan in 1973
and Padma Vibhushan in 2005 and also received Magsaysay award for Journalism, Literature and Creative Communication Arts in 1984
R K Laxman Legacy
R K Laxman was almost peerless during his life
time though Sudhir Dhar, Sudhir Tailant Ajit Ninan were his
contemporaries. But the art of cartoons
has almost died with his death. We do
not see cartoons any more in English Daily news papers like ToI and Hindustan
Times. Good that ToI started a re-run
of his cartoons and we can continue enjoy his matchless genius
R K Laxman died in in Pune on India's Republic Day in 2015 at the age of 93.
Long live RK Laxman genius
S. PRABHAKAR
24th October, 2021
