Banagere Gujjarappa has one pet peeve: That there are only 24 hours in a day. A compulsive doodler, sketching and drawing even while watching TV or chatting with friends, he declares that it gives him peace of mind.

Gujjar's interest in cartoons was awakened when he was in high school, when he was intrigued by toons in newspapers. “I started copying them. Slowly, slowly, I picked up my own style. I drew all the time… I do it even now,” says the artist whose caricatures of teachers made him a popular student in school. Though he won several prizes in cartoon and caricature competitions, his parents believed he would do better in life with a traditional degree, and so Gujjar did his BA, specializing in English, Economics and History, and then went on to do his MA in History. Then came a short stint as a history lecturer and then as an information assistant in the Indian Institute of Management.

However, while at IIM, he also drew cartoons for "Lankesh Patrike". When he went on to be the paper's full-time cartoonist , he was thrilled: “I enjoyed the job very much. All I was expected to do was to draw cartoons. You can imagine how much I liked that!”

“Cartooning is a life-long dream. I can't imagine myself going without drawing even for a single day,” says Gujjar, whose caricatures are in the collections of seven Nobel laureates and four of India's Prime Ministers. “I gives me peace of mind. I love cartooning: it is a kind of penance that I have been practising all my life. I feel revitalized after finishing a drawing.”

He has authored six books for children, and illustrated over 1,000 others. He has given hundreds of lectures and demos on drawing cartoons and caricatures, and his sports cartoon strip is published in 25 newspapers and magazines.

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