LITERATURE-LIGHT AND DELIGHT. 77. LAXMAN REKHA AND NARAYANEEYAM!

LITERATURE- LIGHT AND DELIGHT

77. LAXMAN REKHA AND NARAYANEEYAM !


We know  poetry, prose, drama as the main forms of literature. How many of us have thought of cartoons as literature?

This thought occurred to me with the news of R.K.Laxman's passing. Imagine someone drawing cartoons daily for over 60 years non-stop! Has the world seen another wonder like this?

The cartoon combines the functions of prose, poetry, drama, painting and photograph and surpasses all of them together! A good cartoonist has to be more talented than the creators of any or all of the other forms of literature. Among verbal forms, poetry requires intelligence and understanding on the part of the reader. It has to be explained, annotated. So does a painting require some explanation. A cartoon achieves all this effortlessly. A good cartoon easily surpasses mounds of writing and verbal explanation. When an emaciated road-sider tells  inquisitive onlookers: "I am not fasting,  I am  starving" we know the state of our society after 60 years of Independence. When a pathetic figure lying inside a huge drum  tells the inspecting policeman that  he is "not hiding, but living" there,

 

we know that it is Hindustan Hamara, as Sahir Ludhianvi wrote in 1957 for which the film was not passed by the censors!  ( Cheen-o-arab hamara, Hindustan hamara, raheneko  ghar nahin hain, sara jagah hamara- sara jagah includes the pipeline, road side, railway platform ,drum, ditch, non-working drainage, etc- why not?) How many pages an economist would have written to get this effect? Yet, how many Gunnar Myrdals would be required to make the point? How many eloquent speeches a politician would have made, to no effect? The cartoonist achieves this by a few strokes of the pen or pencil, and a few words, often taken from the context! 

Not that Laxman could or did not write. He was an effective writer, very good at that. May be 30 years ago, I read a feature of his in The Illustrated Weekly of India, describing his travails in obtaining a Canadian visa for visiting the Niagara Falls ,coming from the American side. I thought if the Canadian officials read it, and knew English and consequently understood it, and if they had any sense, they should have committed suicide, or at least tendered an apology, and mended their ways thereafter. But when did we associate sense with officialdom? or how often have we found officials mending themselves?They are there to suck our money, like the leech sucks our blood, and fattens itself! Such was the effect it had on me! I wondered why he did not write more often? Even the uncharitable thought occurred to me : that he did not write, to avoid competing with his more famous brother! But he did write stories, and parts of his own life story!

Not that it would have mattered. R.K.Narayan had his own style. His writing was deceptively simple. He never took sides in a controversy, or indulge in direct social criticism. He captured the lives lived by a certain class of people at  certain points in their lives, and in the life of the nation. He was basically like a social historian, recording things as they were, without distorting, twisting,adding his own colour as mainstream historians tend to do. His characters only gave concrete shape to social realities.I found him really angry only when he dealt with the way the film people mauled his story of The Guide. He would simply paint the verbal picture, and you could draw your conclusion. He was at his emotional best in The English Teacher, and it revealed the heart of the man behind the author, as it was partly autobiographical. It moves the reader so, and a dry eye at the end would only hide a dead heart.It is such subtle, human touches that endear an author to us, not the number of words they have mastered from the dictionary.

In his cartoons, Lakshman was superbly subtle: he made his point, and did not leave one in doubt where his heart and sympathies lay, but did not state in plain  words.  But his writings packed more punch. Narayan's style was understated; Laxman was more frontal. Narayan grew on your consciousness with time, and reflection. Laxman entered it straight.

 TOI was not always available in every place I lived in and worked. So his cartoons could not be seen as and when they appeared. But seen in collected editions of books, their effect is like that of a bomb. If one wants to read about Indian history since Independence, one could read any number of slanted books; but if one wanted to read and understand events as they happened, there is nothing better than Laxman's cartoons. Common Man beats all the literary characters of all the authors down the ages! Stand in Common Man's shoes ( or is it chappals?) and striped coat- you can go anywhere, see everything and conquer the world!

And catch all the crows he has drawn! I bet no photographer could have done that! The Indian philosophical wisdom is that you can understand a tiger only when you become one. Was Laxman a crow in some previous birth that he got so much of their live expressions in those few lines! This is beyond talent, beyond genius. Laxmans are born, God made them like that- no book, no university, no art school. But even God is not so generous in such matters- he made only one Laxman since he created the world!

Both Laxman and Narayan confirm my belief that only those writers who are rooted in their culture can best represent and serve humanity- like a Dickens, Hardy,Mark Twain, Leo Tolstoy! They live on the local soil, but their mind is pervaded by a universal spirit! The expression is local, the interest universal! Hunger is universal, but is best satisfied by local food!

Both Narayan and Laxman died at 94!

It is heartening that Maharashtra Govt recognised the greatness of this distinguished and unique son of India and accorded  State honours at his funeral. It is heartening that it has said it would raise a memorial for him- an honour denied to his illustrious brother by the Karnataka govt, guided by chauvinist linguistic elements.

I have beautiful hardbound volumes of Narayan's books in Everyman's Library editions- though we grew up with the editions of Indian Thought Publications, which were low-priced but decent. As yet, Laxman's books are only available in flimsy paperbacks- that insult to human intelligence and sensitivity. I hope some sensible and sensitive publisher honours Laxman with nice hardbound volumes, and thus honour themselves,too.

Note:

I have shown these cartoons here purely for information/educational purposes. No profit motive is involved. I do not intend to violate any copyright rules. If there is any objection from any quarters, I will not hesitate to remove them.