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Childhood, for R.K. Laxman, was a happy series of doodles in a large family, and he practised with chalk on the floors of his house. When he learnt to wield a pen and pencil comfortably, he began to generously supply beards, moustaches and shaggy eyebrows to photographs or sketches which appeared in books and magazines. He got so good at this that one occasion, it is said, he upset a family acquaintance who felt that a picture of a goat that the young Laxman had embellished, looked just like him. At a time when there were so few openings for cartoonists, Laxman was obstinate that no other profession appealed to him. A chance meeting with Walter Langhammer, art director of The Times Of India proved lucky. And a legend was born. However, the Common Man, Laxman's signature as it were, took a while to evolve. Apart from his daily cartoons, another passion with Laxman is to observe and sketch crows. Why crows? Because they are immensely intelligent birds, and are unfairly dismissed by fretting people as a nuisance. Awards and accolades have been showered on Laxman: The Padma Bhushan, Ramon Magsaysay award, numerous doctorates. But, to him, they have not mattered much. For over 54 years, he arrived at the Times of India office on the dot at 8.30 am, and set to work, blind and deaf to the bustle around him. Lately, however, he has been working from home, after his left side was incapacitated by a stroke. But Laxman's age and illness have not wizened his Common Man one whit. Perhaps because it is a most uncommon man who is drawing him. |
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Calling him the Shakespeare of Indian cartooning, wouldn't be overstating it. A one-man institution of political humour, a national resource of satire is what he has been universally acknowledged as. The face of Indian cartooning to the world. Someone who, for about 54 years now, has every morning shown politicians what windbags they are. 
