For the first six years and a bit of my professional life, the common man was an intrinsic part of my life. Every morning, a little after 9 am, two individuals would file into the Times of India office, almost like clockwork. One was close to 70, the other was just 23. The generation gap did not matter a jot: RK Laxman was very generous with his time and intellect with a young journalist who looked at him with awe and excitement. He would walk into office in a trademark white shirt and black trouser with a black bag in hand. He could have been just any other commuter rushing into the Old Lady of Boribunder from the Victoria Terminus station on the other side of the road. But the man who made the common man a household name was anything but common in his genius with a sketch pen. Every morning, for over 50 years, he captured the sights, sounds, and yes, above all else, the wit, humour, sarcasm of India. In a newspaper plagued with negative news, the Laxman pocket cartoon became an oasis of laughter. He never ridiculed anyone; his cartooning skill was based on capturing the simplicity of life, not slapstick humour but truly located in the many ironies of public life. A pothole not repaired for years, a broken telephone line, a politician who kept cash under the table, or most famously, Indira Gandhi taking son Sanjay in a pram, Laxman’s cartoons were funny but never offensive. He didn’t want to anger the readers, but wanted to take them on a joyride with a quiet chuckle. As he told me once, ‘My sketch pen is not a sword, it’s my friend.’
I asked him once how he discovered the common man. ‘I didn’t discover him, he found me,’ he said, with a glint in the eye. The idea, he said, was to reflect on the sheer bewilderment of the man on the street as he explored a rapidly changing world. The common man was the humble bystander who in his checked coat and dhoti simply observed the funnily strange society around him. Laxman liked to lampoon politicians, but he also was friends with them, including his contemporary Bal Thackeray. The story, possibly apocryphal, is that Laxman and Thackeray applied for the same cartoonist job at the Times of India in the early 50s. Laxman got it and a miffed Balasaheb never forgave the South Indians for taking jobs away from local Maharashtrians!
When he wasn’t drawing politicians, Laxman would sketch crows. He found something ‘uncommon’ in the most common bird. ‘What a beautiful crow is sitting outside my window,’ he would remark like an excited child. He was tight fisted with his money but not with the mind, almost arrogant about his skill but not about his craft. Every morning, he would share his thoughts at our editorial meeting. He had a sharp political mind and one which he said had not been ‘tainted’ by Delhi. ‘Living in Mumbai gives me the benefit of distance, the closer you are to those in power, the more they will corrupt you!’ His journalism mantra was simple: ‘start each cartoon or each article as if it’s your first, and think about your reader before you think about yourself,’ he would tell me. The simplicity of communication was the hallmark of a durability that is unparalleled in news journalism: he started with Jawaharlal and ended with Rahul!
A few years ago, we gave Laxman the CNN IBN lifetime achievement award. He came on a wheelchair and received the award from Abdul Kalam. He cried on stage. So did I. A man who had brought a smile to millions of Indians across generations was in tears. So was the audience. It was perhaps the final act of an extraordinary life: we had laughed with him, how could we not cry? And now that he is gone, there is a sense of emptiness. Farewell sir. And thank you.
