Click to play videoFor 60 years, R K Laxman has shown us who we are. In those 60 years, he has jealously guarded from us who he is. Only family, friends and colleagues from The Times of India, where he has worked most of his life, can claim to know the man behind the famous signature.
He’s known to be wry, caustic and casually arrogant in the way only supremely talented people can be.
Anuradha SenGupta meets R K Laxman in his Pune home, which he visits every few months, and spends half an hour trying to get into the head of the man who has mapped the idiosyncrasies of a nation over its lifetime.
Anuradha SenGupta: Mr Laxman, thank you for talking to us.
R K Laxman: Welcome.
Anuradha SenGupta: You are a person who is notoriously careful about guarding your privacy, isn’t it?
R K Laxman: Somewhat, yes. Otherwise it becomes difficult to. Very normal.
Anuradha SenGupta: What do you mean by that?
R K Laxman: I mean I am not one of those cinema stars or cricket fans. I am just a human being and I would like to continue being so.
Anuradha SenGupta: Do you feel, if you had let yourself become more of a celebrity than you already are, would it have affected your work and the way you perceive the world?
R K Laxman: It would certainly not only affect my work but others’ work also. I am not self-conscious about what I’ve done.
Anuradha SenGupta: Are you the common man?
R K Laxman: I suppose I am.
There is nothing ordinary about R K Laxman’s long reign as India’s best-known political cartoonist. He began his career with the Free Press Journal but it was only after he moved to Benett & Coleman, starting with the Illustrated Weekly and the Evening News of India and The Times of India, that his reputation was established. The front page of the paper has a place reserved only for the Common Man.
Says Former Editor of The Times of India, Dileep Padgaonkar, “No editor of the The Times of India would control Laxman. I tried a couple of times to tell him that he might wish to change a word or two in his captions. And he’d fly into a rage! So, I don’t think he would have ever, ever would have stood for any pressure from his editor. And I doubt very much – and certainly not during my tenure as editor – I never came across a single instance where there were pressures.
“Now it’s quite likely that during the Emergency, that there were, perhaps, a couple of cartoons. One in particular I remember of a grown-up Sanjay Gandhi sitting on a pram and his mother, Indira Gandhi, was taking away – that was found to be offensive. But nothing graver. He didn’t receive any warning. And so he’s continued to do what he wants to do.”
R K Laxman: It came naturally to me. There is no other conscious thought. Thinking six hours, seven hours, and whole day becomes about traffic jams, about economics, about budget, political events, foreign affairs, one after another it comes, to choose.
While readers today are familiar with You Said It, the Common Man pocket cartoon series, it’s in these three-column cartoons on the big political stories that the country’s stewards and inflection points have been immortalised. From intra-party wrangling to defection, walkouts and alliances to sycophancy and dynasty politics, Laxman’s caricatures have mirrored India’s hilarious, sometimes tragic, but always unique tryst with democracy. As Laxman likes to say, Indian politicians have kept him in business.
R K Laxman: Corruption, misbehaviour, falsehood – everything politics can take, that takes place in cartoons.
Anuradha SenGupta: But who is the one you really enjoy? When you read news about him you *rubs hands* said, ‘Ah! Tomorrow morning I have a great thing coming out for people!’
R K Laxman: Morarji Desai. Because he was always making statements – ‘people should not drink’, ‘people should not go to bed late, smoke’ and all that nonsense inspired me. Things which were not the business of the politician – to change the character of the people.
Dileep Padgaonkar corroborates this.
“I think, yes, he loved to caricature Morarji Desai but when I look back to the kind of work he has done, I do believe that his real affection was for Jawaharlal Nehru. I mean, some of his most tender cartoons had been of Nehru. But then, once again, all this has been very relative.”
For their part, most politicians have saluted Laxman’s incredible talent.
Congress Spokesperson Abhishek Manu Singhvi lauds Laxman’s cartoons, and says, “I think in India, in particular, it is important to puncture pomposity, to bring all the high-flying public figures down to earth, to keep you in touch with the Common Man.
“And of course, Laxman has good days, he has bad days – it’s not that he’s equally good every day – but to have kept up that standard, with this huge, humongous quantity, to have yet maintained this excellent quality, I think that is an incredible achievement.”
Singhvi’s counterpart, BJP Spokesperson Ravi Shankar Prasad had a rare moment of accord with him.
“He (Laxman) is an institution,” he said, laughing. “There can be only one R K Laxman, not two. And therefore, he’s been shining for the last 60 years. Every day, the Common Man, with the smile on his face, with his despondency and despair, hope and agony, makes a wonderful comment on contemporary India.”
Anuradha SenGupta: As a political satirist, as a political cartoonist, do you see yourself as a moral crusader?
R K Laxman: No, no. No such lessons on anything. I don’t make my cartoons so the people may learn. I have no such – that’s bad.
Anuradha SenGupta: Why do you say that?
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R K Laxman: It is not my business. To make people laugh and understand the ridiculousness of the situation, that’s all, nothing more than that. Then you become a moralist. Then it is not a cartoon, it is a poster.
As you flip through R K Laxman’s cartoons and remember he’s had one out almost every day, you are struck by their timelessness. Though they seldom fail to evoke a smile, the artist says little provokes him today.
Even as we laugh at his works, he says life gives him less and less to laugh at, a feeling made stronger by the paralytic attack he had in 2005, that’s left him struggling for control.
Anuradha SenGupta: You have commented over the years on traffic jams, on corruption, on indifference by elected political representatives, lack of implementation of schemes. Many of those things have not changed, they have remained as they are. Does that make R K Laxman a cynical man?
R K Laxman: I am a cynical man. That does not make – I am born a cynical man.
Anuradha SenGupta: You are not an optimist. You believe that this is the way we are and this is the way we will be.
R K Laxman: Optimism is one which says that everything will be all right. So, I feel things will get worse, not better. Roads, potholes, traffic, traffic jam, all that have not changed.
Anuradha SenGupta: You have recorded this over the years – does it not make you angry that things do not change?
R K Laxman: Yes, yes, it does make me very angry, but helpless.
Anuradha SenGupta: Makes you feel helpless?
R K Laxman: Naturally. What power do I have? Nothing!
Anuradha SenGupta: What would you say if I said that today there are signs – especially in the media, be it newspapers, be it television – where we are trying to give the common man a platform and a voice to speak up and to be noticed? Would you not agree that this common man is different from the Common Man that you have created? That the Common Man is beginning to speak out today, instead of being just the spectator?
R K Laxman: No, if he’s a common man, he will always be a spectator, not start talking.
Anuradha SenGupta: You are a cynic, Mr Laxman, as you admitted.
R K Laxman: I told you. You can’t make him speak. He doesn’t want to speak, because he knows it won’t help.
Anuradha SenGupta: I thought there would be hope…
R K Laxman: How? Sense of humour does not give hope. It has nothing to do with it. Hope means what? Tomorrow everything will be all right? There would be a nuclear war? There would be Iraq, there would be Bush… that kind of hope? Things are getting from bad to worse.
Anuradha SenGupta: The hope that we will be one day conscious enough and active enough to change things the way to what we want them to be.
R K Laxman: You can’t change, that’s it. It’s not because they are not aware of it. You mean to say politicians are not aware of what is going on? They are aware of it but they are helpless because they want to become leaders. That is the idea – to stand for the elections and get it, that’s the idea of the politicians.
If Laxman was prone to hoping, he says he hopes that India would be freed of poverty and indiscipline. Given his stature, no other Indian cartoonist has managed to pose a serious challenge to his crown. Some say it’s his platform – the mighty Times of India - others say it’s how prolific he is, still others point to his versatility.
Fellow cartoonist Sudhir Dar bestowed many encomiums on Laxman.
“Sometimes he was very sharp and his satire was pretty acidic. But I think most times, he was a gentle cartoonist, you know? And specially his work appeared in pocket form, reflected life around him, city life, urban life and so on, so magnificently,” he said.
Laxman himself has no qualms in saying he sees few – if anybody – who impresses him.
R K Laxman: Even today, India doesn’t have a cartoonist worth the name. Somehow, they’re not coming out.
Anuradha SenGupta: Why do you think that is?
R K Laxman: I don’t know. How can I speak for them? They don’t have that capacity, ability. They try to copy from somewhere. They try to be funny rather than humourous.
Anuradha SenGupta: Do you think Indians as a community have a sense of humour?
R K Laxman: Of course they have. Great sense of humour they have.
Anuradha SenGupta: Do you think we are able to laugh at ourselves?
R K Laxman: I would say ‘yes’. I can’t be – I have not observed that.
Sudhir Dar recounted an anecdote about Laxman.
“Many years ago, Pritish Gandhi was the editor of the Illustrated Weekly (and) had done an issue on cartoonists, and I think Laxman was on the cover. Pritish wrote to all of us, asking us to express our views about Laxman’s work, and so on. So we all had our own thing to say. And I remember that I wrote saying that if I was Laxman’s editor, I would chop his captions very drastically, because his captions just went on and on and on. And you know, as they say brevity is the soul of wit with the other contemporaries. Really had a big bash with Laxman and his work. So the next time I met him, which was many months later, he said to me what the hell did you guys do, you all ganged up against me! Well, I think we needed to say a few things but I still am a great admirer.”
Anuradha SenGupta: If the world leaves R K Laxman frustrated and cynical, what is it that gives him joy and hope?
R K Laxman: My work gives me great joy and hope. And I do my crows, I read books, creative work.
Anuradha SenGupta: Your crows, I like the way you used the words ‘my crows’.
R K Laxman: But I have been watching the crows since childhood. I loved the colour on its face. It can count up to seven – number seven it can count. They have made an observation. They are very clever birds.
R K Laxman is used to getting awards having already received honours like the Padma Vibhushan and the Magsaysay award. But his emotional reaction to CNN-IBN’s Indian of the Year Lifetime Achievement Award was unusual for a man who is known to keep things private.
R K Laxman: My journey to this CNN award celebration started when I was five years old. I started sketching at the age of five. Fortunately, my parents didn’t interfere with me. I went on sketching from there – market square, people walking, cows crossing the road, vegetable sellers sketching their vegetables, all this I sketched when I was very young and I became quite professional in my sketches. In classrooms I used to draw the boys and teachers. Once I drew a teacher with a terrible moustache, turban, bucktooth and eyes like a big – staring. It came out very well. As I was still putting final touches, he came and twisted my ear and said ‘What are you doing?’ ‘I am just working, sir.’ (He was an) Arithmetic teacher. ‘You are working? You are trying to make fun of me.’
Anuradha SenGupta: This is the tiger, the teacher who looked like a tiger?
R K Laxman: Yeah. ‘You are making fun of me?’ He held it to the class – ‘It’s not me?’ and everybody laughed. *Laughs*
R K Laxman has had a similar laugh at Mumbai’s J J School of Arts that had turned down his application, only to invite him several years later as a chief guest. Laxman’s craft is self-taught and imbibed from gurus, some he’s never met.
Growing up in a large, liberal family in sleepy Mysore, one that has given the world author R K Narayan, Laxman said his family gave him the freedom to choose just who he wanted to be.
R K Laxman: The cartoon contains observation, sense of humour, sense of the ridiculous and contradiction – life! That was in me that manifested itself in the cartooning and I used to watch people and contradictions in certain aspects of life. So cartoon(ing) is natural to me.
Getting personalised cartoons every year from him has been his 12-year-old granddaughter Rimanika. She knows she’s the apple of his eyes and allowed liberties no one else has had.
Like him, she doesn’t pull her punches.
“Many people say that my grandfather’s very sarcastic, but when he means sarcastic, that time it’s like more of a jokey way, so don’t take it seriously,” she explains.
And like him, she likes sketching but would do it her own way.
“Sort of the same thing, but in a better way. Like, his is black and white mostly. I don’t like the colour white, so I rather go in for colour with the black and I do, not a Common Man, but a Common Woman,” she says.
Anuradha SenGupta: So, you’ve been an easy person to live with?
R K Laxman: No, I’ve got my demands.
Anuradha SenGupta: Like?
R K Laxman: Like… can’t interfere with me.
Anuradha SenGupta: What does that mean, that you have to be left alone?
R K Laxman: Left alone, I do what I like.
Anuradha SenGupta: Do you give the same freedom to everybody else around you?
R K Laxman: No, I correct them.
Anuradha SenGupta: Mr Laxman, you have double standards.
R K Laxman: Doesn’t matter. It’s nice to have double standards.
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