R K Laxman , the immortal common man

The news about the eminent cartoonist R K Laxman suffering three stokes and being admitted to a hospital in Mumbai was one which would not have been classified as a banner headline in a newspaper or as a breaking news one on a TV news channel. But it was still disturbing as if this was a tragedy in our families.

R K Laxman through his cartoons especially the “you said it” series in Times of India had a constant presence in our Drawing rooms. Through his cartoons he immortalised the “common man “ a much neglected creature in our society. I personally feel indebted to him because when I started reading newspapers in my early teens the only thing that was attractive in the paper was his cartoons . The speciality of his cartoons was that the character “common man” never spoke while all he did was watch and observe the events happening around

The character with his checked shirt , dishevelled hair and a constant confused look on his face was made immortal by the great cartoonist.

Such was laxman’s status that people felt privileged to be featured in his cartoons. He had caricatured leaders right from Nehru thru Indira Gandhi down to Vajpayee ,Advani and leaders of our times. And everybody appreciated his work and never felt hurt by the caricatures.

His work was never censured or censored even during the worst days of Emergency in 1975. That shows how objective his cartoons and the comments in them were. He was one of most celebrated cartoonist of his time and served “Times of India” for more than five decades.

There are stories around his arrival and stay in Mumbai ,Bombay then. He has reportedly observed that when he came to this city in the early fifties the most striking image of the city was the dug up roads He had resolved then that he will leave the city once all the dug up roads get filled up. But he says that he was forced to stay on in this city as we still are living with dug up roads.

For once we must be thankful to the corrupt contractors ,politicians and the civic officials for giving us some joy because it was due to their effort ( or lack of it ) that we could enjoy the presence of this great man in our city .

Ultimately he had to leave Mumbai and settle down in a much quieter Pune in 2003 due to continued ill health which left him partially paralysed. But his cartoons still appear in the “ Times of India “ but with a lesser frequency.

We as mortals will all have to take a bow one day and leave this world . But in the case of RK Laxman our irrational mind wants him to be left immortal so that he and his work can amuse ,and educate the generations to come who will otherwise be deprived of It. If and when he departs the void that he may leave behind will not be breached .

It is a ferverent plea to the almighty to grant good health to this great soul and if he needs the presence a wonderful cartoonist in heaven ,this man should be eased out with the minimum of pain and suffering. This is the least that god can do to a wonderful person who has given a trillion moments of joy to a nation for more than five decades.

Poor Indians

It is not enough to lament the death of a dalit some where in haryana when we were busy watching the IPL on our flat screen Televisions. We have to first accept both as the reality of our life and then go about dismantling the evil in them. Although it may be hard to accept but we have to accept that we are a caste and class-ridden society where the chasm between the classes and castes are ever-widening. But strangely we are just not doing anything at all to rid the society of these evils. But silently we are doing everything to perpetuate this system. Even when we have the opportunity to do something to change we just prefer to be mute spectators than be the instrument of change. We are active participants in caste based organisation and parties who do everything to perpetuate these divisions. And it is always a middle class hobby to play the victim and complain about being powerless to ring in any changes. When will we try to rise above our limitations and start doing things than whining about the mess around us?

Coming to the IPL we are back to tokenism that we are so famous for. The entire fiasco has precisely claimed one and half victims. We have a Shashi Tharoor who lost his job as a Minister for being candid in admitting that he took active interest in getting an IPL team for his home state. The entire opposition and an overzealous media hounded him as if he was the first minister to commit this impropriety. It won’t be an exaggeration to state that majority of the ministers in union ministry and in state cabinets will have to be removed if the same yardstick of Propriety is applied to their activities. We are all aware that almost all projects right from local municipal level ones to national level mega project are sanctioned to the “right” people with “blessings” of panchayat level leaders, corporators, MLA’s & MP’s depending on where they are in the pecking order. Shashi Tharoor received the punishment for not being discreet about the whole thing. And Lalit modi for the moment has just been suspended by the self-righteous BCCI who in turn have given themselves, all the worthies in the Governing council and Sharad Pawar a clean chit wherein the actual reality is that all of them are equally culpable in bringing disrepute to the game by turning a blind eye to the happenings that were taking place right under their noses. Media as usual is losing interest in the entire episode as they have milked it to the maximum extent possible. Moreover why will they want to upset the gravy train when reportedly they were promised 250,000 sq cms of space in the print media and 3000 hrs of coverage on the electronic media by the IPL .Why will they want to kill the goose that gave them so many golden eggs. The only loser in the entire game will be the aam aadmi who will be busy saving hard earned money which can fuel the jamboree in its next edition.

THE IPL STORY

Well it may be unjustified to say that IPL is now a Hub of corruption ,but matters in it are not squeaky clean too. But for that matter BCCI is also not known for clean and transparent transactions.As the parent so the offspring. We need not go into details and we will never be privy to the complete details.Look at the set up in BCCI and the IPL .We have more than required presence of politicians in BCCI and with IPL it has brought in a plethora of businessmen too,and we need not speculate about the outcome of this nexus. And who do we have as the Governing council members of IPL ,some faces from the pack of BCCI members and some ex cricketers who are milking the venture as commentators or in some other way .And that leaves the entire show to be controlled by none other than LALIT MODI a man not known for a squeaky clean past unless he has done a Valmiki act in getting reformed. It is known that power corrupts and absolute power corrputs absolutely .Don't we have the clear picture now ?

terrorism

These days the hot topic of discussion across all sections of the society is terrorism and ways & means to tackle that. The govt is spending a lot of the Tax payer’s money to develop anti terrorism squads to tackle this menace. But inadvertently there is a steady addition to the band of people who want to indulge in this kind of unlawful activity. This is due to the cavalier attitude of the government and civil society towards unlawful activities and general break down of our criminal justice system in bringing to book people indulging in unlawful activities. Witness the government’s reaction (or rather lack of it) in dealing with the agitations being carried out by the MNS in the last couple of years and by the shivsena now. Spare a thought for the families of the innocent people who may have lost their lives and livelihood in all these opportunistic agitations. Remember No Thackeray has ever led any agitation on the street so they are never hurt and never loose anything because they do not have to work for a living. They just reap the benefits out of the common man's miseries. Search the dictionaries for a right word for this kind of organisms. And when the law cannot provide security to law abiding citizens don't be surprised if some of them decide to take law into their own hands. This is at the root of the all the insurgency and terrorist activity that we see around the country.

So spare a thought the next time we see some of our dear leaders egg on their supporters to launch another agitation. Think and Decide as to who pays the Price for it.

Amitabh The Mahanayak

Dear Amitji

I was amazed reading this post of yours on the blog space.This is more like the monologue in the climax of Your movie “Rann”.It just amounts to nothing ,just random mumbling.
And another thing that stands out is your attempts at remaining on the right side of the trouble makers.Your attempts at showing that you are close to the thackerays is just appalling.Of Course you may argue that they are your Family.But as always your family always have regular dates with activity which are bordering on lawlessness.I am not taking any names because they are Obvious ones .If they are indeed your family I think you can use your wisdom to restrain them from indulging in unwanted slander.Reference to the article in your family’s mouthpiece saamna and the comments in them about Rahul Gandhi.And If Iam not mistaken the Gandhi’s are your Ex-family.Your silence on that matter borders on spinelessness or are you happy that the Gandhi’s are no longer your friends and the present family is helping you in getting back at them.I was watching Jaya Bacchans interview on Tele on the 3rd Feb.She Had an interesting take on The SRK issue.She was mentioning that everyone must face these crises on their own and not expect any kind of help or support,that is because she had to endure her trials with MNS all by her self.Despite her attempt to smile away like a trained method actor one could not miss the vindictive and the cruel undercurrents behind that facade.And you have proved to be the proverbial political butterfly by hobnobbing with the Congress first ,then Amar Mulayam Saga,coupled with your dalliances the Thackerays and now your latest alliance with narendra Modi.You have proved yourself to be perfect immigrant ,the quintessential survivor who knows which side of the bread is to be buttered

media and its role

It is all right to be an advocate of an independent media, devoid of any kind of control other than the market.But is it just sufficient for the media to be free and independent?.I think media also has a social responsibility and should not just pander to the market forces.Because the market is not just a monolithic entity. There are various sections and each with a separate and distinct thought process and the media should be able to mirror all these thought processes.And after all is the media all that free for many a times we get an impression that sections of the media are dancing to the tune various vested interests. And being driven by the market should not seem like being by monetary considerations

Racism

It is interesting that the issue of Racism in Australia is such a rage in the Media now.The Aussies will try to cover up the issue and comment with a straight face that there's is not a Racist country.Yes the fact is that the country may not be racist but there are many elements in that country who are extremely racist in attitude. It is just not coincident that this issue has come up just days after the CEO of Telstra ,the biggest Telecom company in Australian Mr .Sol Trujillos commented in a BBC interview that Australia is" Racist and a Backward country".Incidentally Mr Sol was drawing 30 million dollar as Salary,and he had reasons to say that ,and one of them was some comments attributed to the Aussie PM Kevin Rudd about Mr Sol when he was about to relinquish Office .There were enough red faces in Australia after Mr Sol's interview and now they have real muck on their faces. The reasons for this racial anger are many ,one of them is lack of undestanding about other cultures amongst Australian public .And this is not a recent phenomenon .I remember the story about Russi Surti an ex Indian cricketer now settled in Australia. He had recounted stories of discrimination when he had migrated to Australia . The dissappointment is palpable because the outside impression that one has about the country is one of being a El Doroado of sorts,but reality is quite the opposite.Another aspect of this matter that we cannot overlook is that many  of these "victims "never  came back or thought of coming back and many of them did not even report the matter to the authorities.They never had the courage to ask for their rights when their parents were  paying thru their noses to enrich the Aussie economy .So much for our Uprightness