Call from the ‘Uncommon Man’

Rajnish Wattas

As the uncommon   creator of the Common Man cartoons, R K Laxman, leaves for his  heavenly abode, I suspect    up there, he would soon pick up his  sketch  pens and bring about a chuckle even to the  gods and goddesses  with his  gentle, impish spoofs. 

For years, as an ardent admirer of the two genius, legendry   brothers R K Laxman   and R K Narayan the novelist — I would never miss any publication by either of them. Whether it was a new book by Narayan  or caricatures of Indian politicians and travails of the silently suffering, befuddled ‘Common Man’ — they were a must read. In a way both brothers embellished one another's work. Besides Laxman’s work as a cartoonist, he illustrated all  of Narayan's books- providing authentic  visual imagery to Malgudi and its  depiction as the quintessential South Indian small town.

My first memory of the creative twosome is of father reading R K Narayan’s novels serialised in a popular weekly magazine with illustrations by Laxman. The combination of the two legendry talents would make my father smile and  let out  soft twitters of laughter to himself. Coming from an otherwise stern person, we thought it extraordinary!

On growing up, my fascination for the two only grew more ardent. I read every word published by Narayan and  also never missed the ‘stinging without wounding’ cartoons of Laxman. In 2001 when Narayan was awarded the Padma Vibushan, I published a spoof in the form of an open letter from the residents of his fictional town Malgudi, beseeching him to be the chief guest at the town hall function to honour him, imitating his hallmark style of writing and lacing it with the typical Malgudi characters.

A few days later when I returned from work in the evening-there were no mobile phones then — our semi-literate cook from the outposts of Himachal in his usual laconic manner  casually mentioned that there had been an outstation phone call from one ‘Laaksa..man Sahib’. It was a quizzical call, as he could not  recall the name accurately but had noted down the phone number, as the Sahib had asked me to call him back. When I saw the scrawny, scribble written on the back of an envelope in broken Hindi, my heart raced... was it from the eminent cartoonist himself?

The next day, restlessly waiting for offices to open — journalists are notoriously late to come in — finally around 11am I dialled the number, and was put across to the great man! I waited with bated breath for the response. Finally, a gruff ‘Yes’ was heard, and I rattled off my well-rehearsed lines...only to be responded with great warmth and mentioned that he had  liked my piece on Narayan and  got my address specially from the Delhi office to convey his compliments. In fact, he had also sent a copy of the article to his brother in Chennai. As I poured out my gushing admiration for his work, he patiently kept chatting with me for nearly half an hour and even invited me to visit him in Mumbai/Pune where he now lived.

As promised, he duly sent me an autographed copy of my article by him, and  also  one from Narayan. The creator of the 'Common Man' may have left the front pages of the newspaper-his deft strokes will always remain etched on my heart and on that scrap of historic paper saved by the cook.