Remembering R. K. Laxman
He was fond of collecting brass and bronze statues and artifacts, he would clean them lovingly and then smear oil to give them an ancient look and to protect from sea air.
KAMLA MANKEKAR and ACHIN VANAIK recall his other interests.
KAMLA MANKEKAR: Wary of the Delhi swarm
I first saw R.K.Laxman in the late fifties. A frail, bespectacled young man rather shy and withdrawn, he was in Delhi to hold an exhibition of his cartoons at the AIFACS (All India Fine Arts and Crafts Society) gallery. The Delhi editor of the Times of India had to make quite an effort to persuade Laxman to hold the show as he was wary of the bureaucratic Capital swarming with sycophants and ruled by a domineering senior cartoonist, K Shankar Pillai .
Laxman however did not lack fans and admirers in Delhi. On the opening day, a constant stream of visitors kept him on his feet from morning till late afternoon when he nearly swooned with hunger and fatigue.His host whisked him away for ahot meal of rice and coconut garnished 'ambat'. Revived, Lakshman lost no time restoring the spirit of his host's ten-year-old son, suffering anxiety cramps over a maths test due the next morning. He drew a monkey faced caricature of a class teacher wagging a crooked finger on a group of bemused boys while the Common Man peeped from the window.
Laxman again visited Delhi and AIFACS hall where his dancer wife Kumari Kamala was giving a performance. He was a devoted and attentive husband ,escorting VIP invitees and looking after critics. The marriage did not last however, and I met Laxman later in Bombay with a new wife, also named Kamala, in their Warden Road apartment across Breach Candy. They were a well matched couple; Kamala wrote children's books which Laxman illustrated. Their more famous joint venture is the Thama Stories, featuring animal characters, specially an elephant with human traits.
Laxman was fond of collecting brass and bronze statues and artifacts; he would clean them lovingly and then smear oil to give then an ancient look and to protect from sea air.
I was sorry to read reports about his last days in hospital, wrapped and trapped in life sustaining devices. I would rather remember Laxman wistfully watching waves breaking on the rocks of Breach Candy shores, disdainful of the mobile food carts serving Kathi-Kababs to boisterous teenagers.
ACHIN VANAIK: Laxman and the magician
As an assistant editor in the Times of India during the 1980s, I got to know R. K. Laxman quite well. He had a curious, unusual mind and a sense of almost boyish fun which I think went to influence his work as a cartoonist in no small measure. I remember particularly how he was extremely interested in magic -- not the staged extravaganzas based on sophisticated props but what he feared was the losing art of street magic based on the hard work involved in developing sleight-of-hand abilities. This was something that I too was interested in and it became something about which we talked about quite a bit. He even, on one occasion, brought along during office hours a coin magician -- unusual for him because Laxman was extremely disciplined and his morning working hours were usually sacrosanct with his room remaining out of bounds for visitors for the first half of the day. That magician made coins appear and disappear effortlessly -- he even multiplied them endlessly. The wizardry with which he did this enthralled us. Later, that magician taught us both a couple of hand coin tricks that we practised and developed something of a skill at performing.
(Also read: Mischief without malice: DILEEP PADGAONKAR on the R. K. Laxman he knew.)