Twenty-one years ago, when the first edition of The Hindu BusinessLine was being readied for publication, RK Laxman visited the newspaper’s editorial headquarters in Chennai.
K Venugopal, then executive editor of the newspaper, asked whether he would churn out a sketch of Manmohan Singh, who was Finance Minister, for the launch issue. N Ram, Chairman of Kasturi & Sons Ltd, who was then Editor of BusinessLine , believed it might not be a good idea as it could get Laxman in trouble with his employers Bennett, Coleman & Co Ltd, which publishes The Economic Times , a competing business newspaper. But the great cartoonist was unfazed; “They can’t fire me,” he said.
Ravikanth Nandula,
Laxman had a penchant for identifying the most telling traits of politicians. He immortalised Indira Gandhi’s imperious nose and he revelled in Singh’s bushy eyebrows and his balding pate. He had lampooned the New Economic Policy of Singh and Rao in 1991 as he saw it as capitulation to the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.
With his inherent empathy for the underdog, he drew cartoons of Singh and Rao as looters who bullied the common man. His cartoons were never strident in their commentary, but they revealed where he stood.
The old-fashioned wayThose were the days when cartooning was done the ‘old-fashioned way’: drawing by hand, scanning it, taking a bromide print and then pasting it on the page.
Laxman interacted with some of the editorial staff in a large conference room packed with people. Later, he moved to a smaller room, where he sat down to do a portrait of Singh with a marker pen for the first edition of The Hindu BusinessLine .
The cartoonist, who set the highest standards for himself, was displeased with the first draft. He turned to Ram and said that over the years, he found drawing the daily pocket cartoon took more effort than doing the larger ones (that spread across three or four columns) and that were carried in the op-ed pages.
To the horror of those around, he disapproved of what he had drawn, tore it up and threw it in the bin. He drew a second one, and inked it after seeming more satisfied.
The cartoon ran alongside an article published on the back page ‘Budget cannot provide free lunches’, written by S Venkitaramanan, former Governor of the Reserve Bank of India.
Nandula, then a 24-year-old cartoonist, hoped to get his hands on the original that would be published. But no such luck. It went to a more senior person. So, he rummaged in the dustbin, extracted the bits of the one Laxman had torn up and pieced it together.
For many years, Laxman’s discarded Singh hung above his work desk. “It was an amusing reminder that even geniuses find their work inadequate,” he recalls.