Tunnel of Time by R.K. Laxman

In the very first paragraph of "The Tunnel of Time", India's best-known satirical cartoonist R K Laxman declares that the book is not an autobiography in the usual sense and he will just ramble on. I was hooked by the candor.

In the 230+ engrossing pages that follow, he narrates in a refreshingly unconventional style the highlights of his very eventful life and long cartooning career. It is peppered with funny anecdotes and bon mots that will keep you laughing as you read. For years, I've marveled at his wit and keen eye for the absurd in capturing moment's in India's political history through his crisp "You Said It" cartoons. This book makes me admire R K Laxman even more.

R K Laxman was the youngest of eight siblings, one of whom is the illustrious novelist R K Narayan. After high school, Laxman applied to the Sir J.J. Institute of Applied Art hoping to concentrate on his lifelong interests of drawing and painting, but the dean of the school wrote to him that his drawings lacked "the kind of talent to qualify for enrolment in our institution as a student", and refused admission. After drawing professionally for various media companies in Mysore, Chennai & Delhi, he interviewed at Times of India seeking a job as a political cartoonist. He was offered a job as an illustrator at a salary that was more than he had asked for. He had to persist before he became a political cartoonist. He started his daily cartoon "You Said It" in 1951 & kept drawing for the newspaper for half a century! He created the storyline for "Wagle Ki Duniya", an Indian sitcom that aired on Doordarshan from 1988 to 1990. He was awarded the Padma Bhushan (1973), Padma Vibhushan (2005) and the prestigious Ramon Magsaysay Award for his exemplary work.

Excerpts from the book:

I looked upon the business of sitting daily in a classroom for hours, to study, learn and face examinations, as an unavoidable family and social obligation. But I believed drawing and sketching were vital commitments to my whole future life.

Drawing...was looked upon as something fit only for predetermined high school dropouts.

One day I was so impressed with one of the cartoons in Punch that I sat down with a paper and pencil to copy it. I had hardly started when one of my brothers passing by saw me, stopped in his tracks and said, ‘Copying? Never. Look around, observe and sketch! You will never be an artist if you copy. It is like eating leftover food from someone else’s plate’

An active imagination, fueled by a keen sense of absurdity, could even see the human resemblance to inanimate objects such as buildings, the shape of bottles in a drug store, or certain models of automobiles. This observation would certainly seem crazy to those with normal vision and thinking habits. A cartoonist born with a cockeyed vision manipulates a face or human situation and distorts it without losing the essence of humour.

Largely politics was the profession of school dropouts. I observed that politicians were endowed with immense vitality but little intelligence....politicians were the most durable among the human species. They were tough, impervious to humiliation, failure, defeat , insults, shocks. The led a conscience free existence hungering eternally for power even when charged with corruption, fraud and murder! For all the traveling they did all over the subcontinent, eating and sleeping at odd hours and shouting themselves hoarse in front of a battery of microphones in heat and dust and sub-zero temperatures, they never suffered from colds, sore throats, fevers or any such maladies that afflicted the common citizen. Thus I mused critically, judging, making uncharitable, abusive mental notes about the very people who just by being themselves, had generously provided me with bread and butter and bought me rewards and fame.

...I had no problem getting a daily idea for my cartoon. The leaders at the centre as well as in the states were falling over each other, as it were, to help me out at my drawing board.

..my job was becoming more and more difficult - not for want of ideas, but because there were too many of them. The concept of a minister had changed. It was no more that of a respectable personage moving about with dignity preoccupied with matters of state. It was now associated with a corrupt comic figure, surrounded by sycophants waiting for favours and the main chance.

...ministers made a lucrative job of the cabinet’s posts. The nation's urgent problems became a secondary matter. Parliamentary debates became an uproarious carnival, with constant walkouts, shouting, thumping of desks, and marching to the well of the house. Marshals were being summoned to carry the unruly elements out of the house.