In news- Recently, the Prime Minister of India has paid tributes to legendary cartoonist R K Laxman on his 100th birth anniversary.
A brief note on R K Laxman-
- He was known for his cartoon creation ‘The Common Man’.
- He was born on 24 October 1921 in Mysore, Karnataka.
- He was also known as “Pied Piper of Delhi”.
- He created the daily comic strip ‘You Said It’, which chronicled Indian life and politics through the eyes of the “common man,” a bulbous-nosed bespectacled observer dressed in a dhoti and a distinctive checked coat who served as a silent point-of-view character for readers.
- While at Maharaja’s College in Mysore, he illustrated stories by his novelist brother, R.K. Narayan, in The Hindu newspaper.
- He subsequently turned to creating political cartoons for local newspapers
- He worked at The Free Press Journal in Mumbai (Bombay) with Bal Thackeray, who was a cartoonist before founding the Shiv Sena political party.
- In 1951 Laxman moved to The Times of India, where he created You Said It.
- He died in January 2015 in Pune at the age of 93.
- In 2005, he was awarded the Padma Vibhushan, India’s second highest civilian honour.
His other works-
- He published numerous short stories, essays, and travel articles, some of which were collected in The Distorted Mirror (2003).
- He also wrote the novels The Hotel Riviera (1988) and The Messenger (1993) and an autobiography, The Tunnel of Time (1998).
- He created a popular mascot for the Asian Paints Ltd group called “Gattu” in 1954.
- His creations also include the sketches drawn for the television adaptation of Malgudi Days which was written by his elder brother R. K. Narayan, directed by Shankar Nag, and a Konkan coast based Hindi sitcom, Wagle Ki Duniya.
Source: Times of India
