Distorted Mirror

by R K Laxman

  Long years in this business has taught me that there does exist a strange likeness, however remote and far-fetched, between people and animals, birds and, with a further stretch of imagination, even inanimate objects. I do not find it difficult at all, for instance, to correlate the resemblance of a particular person to an old ramshackle truck or T-Model Ford, or the appearance of a cabinet minister to a particular bottle in a drug store. I know a person whose wife unfailingly reminded me of the Taj Mahal by moonlight!—of course, suggested by her make-up, size, jewellery, etc. It is these ridiculous associations of ideas that help the caricaturist. I discovered this secret when I was a boy.

  Our home in Mysore used to get a lot of magazines. They lay scattered on a table in the hall and I used to spend hours going through them as they contained a lot of pictures of people, places, trees, mountains and animals. Our neighbours used to constantly drop in to collect a magazine or two for weekend reading. Sometimes they would return them dog-eared and begrimed and sometimes, mercifully, not return them at all. However, in course of time the periodicals disappeared, making room, like the change of seasons, for new arrivals.

  I was constantly busy drawing pictures wherever I could in those days; walls, doors, sheets of paper in my father’s desk and even the margins and endpapers of deluxe edition of classics were all covered with drawings of trees, the rising sun, cottages, crows, funny portraits of men, women and children, etc.

  I used to derive particular delight in distorting the photographs in the magazines, adding curly moustaches to the pretty face of a winner of a beauty contest, or namams to a formidable-looking Nazi, or giving hats to those who did not have them or goggles or turbans; and so on I went merrily. My elders allowed me this liberty only with the magazines that had outlived their use on the table. I think I found Life magazine particularly good for my purpose.

  One day I was busy adding a pair of horn-rimmed glasses to a picture of a very attractive goat found in the Ural mountains. Sitting next to me was a friend of our family. This gentleman never took the magazines home but read them all in the cool comfort of our drawing room, taking his own time. After satisfying myself with my efforts on the goat, I moved on to other magazines. For hours we sat together silently absorbed in our respective activities.

  Suddenly, he jumped up and shouted at me, in what seemed uncontrollable rage which shook the house and brought the elders hurrying to us. He was at that moment holding the Life magazine at the page showing the bespectacled goat. ‘I will never again step into this house after this insult!’ he roared, hurling the magazine to the floor, and walked out. We stood petrified and bewildered, not having a clue as to what it was all about! My elder brother recovered from the shock a bit and picked up the magazine to find out what triggered the family friend’s outrage. He examined the goat for some time, turned to me with a smile and said, ‘You should not do this sort of thing. Poor man!’

  Looking at the humanized goat, I myself was astonished to discover the remarkable resemblance to our erstwhile friend of the family! Accidentally, I had stumbled at that moment on the key to the art of caricature.

  Even now I look at a face beyond the physical shape, light and shade, or colour of the skin, for that undefinable, elusive, surprise element which a face actually hides and which is so essential for caricature.

  THE DISTORTED MIRROR

  PEOPLE ARE curious about my profession and try to clear their doubts by putting all sorts of questions. Recently a lady asked me, ‘Do you do the drawings for your cartoons yourself?’ I answered, ‘Yes, I do.’ Then she questioned, ‘And the captions to the cartoons, do you write them too?’ ‘Of course,’ I said. And, finally, she asked, ‘The ideas for the cartoons, don’t say you think them up too?’ Of course, this kind of dialogue is an extreme example. But of all the questions the one that is frequently put to me is how I get my ideas. It is impossible to give a serious answer to this and so I usually evade it by some supposedly funny rejoinder. The other questions are: How big are the original cartoons? How long do I take to do them? How many people work under me? What do the ministers think of my making fun of them? Do they have a sense of humour? Have I ever been arrested and if not why not?—and so on. For all such questions I give replies ranging from the flippant to the scholarly, depending on the questioners, their interest and mood.

  There is one that is rather rarely asked but which makes me go into deep introspection. This is: ‘When you look around, does everything appear funny to you?’

  A cartoonist does not lead a charmed life of perpetual fun out of the reach of the cares and worries that bedevil his fellow men. The fluctuating prices of onions affect me in the same way as they delight or outrage a primary schoolteacher. Likewise, taxes depress my spirit. Bores at the mike, and traffic jams drive me crazy. Surely a doctor does not always look at life in terms of coughs, colds, allergies and bronchial inflammations. A star of the silver screen, I am sure, has enough sense to know that beyond the range of the camera life does not continue to be full of idyllic scenes, sex, songs and ketchup-blood. Why, then, should a cartoonist see living caricatures and hear rib-tickling dialogue all around him? So I comfort myself with the self-assurance that my view of life is normally as banal as that of the next man in the queue for sugar or kerosene.

  But I do sometimes wonder at the back of my mind whether my profession has not had a subtle influence on my outlook. After officially closing down for the day, I do keep on searching for ideas and oddities subconsciously through all my waking hours.

  That is why I like to watch faces and entertain myself standing at a streetcorner as if it were a gallery of portraits in three dimensions. From the eighteen-year-old filly dancing on the other side of the road to the grubby-looking beggar at my heels whose face is hewn out by the weather and anxiety, and scores of others passing by, I am fascinated to see them all.

  This occupational pastime is not confined just to observing the oddities in the physical features of a person. The habit wanders into wider fields and there is a great deal of fun to be derived from studying human character which is beyond the reach of the caricaturist’s pencil and is captured only in terms of verbal descriptions. Most people seem either dull, cantankerous, pompous, egoistical or plain stupid to most other people. But a modicum of tolerance and objectivity will reveal in all of them the lovable eccentric.

  For instance, a friend of mine became the object of intense hostility over nearly two square miles of our locality because our entire neighbourhood suddenly discovered that he was vainglorious, vulgar, egoistic and despicable. All that he did was celebrate his fiftieth birthday in rather a grand style and in a manner as if no one in the world had ever achieved his type of greatness. He had film music blaring out from loudspeakers turned towards the road right from the early hours of the historic day. He had festooned the trees and potted plants with blinking coloured lights. He served ice-cream and eatables in keepsake cups and plates embossed with his name and age! My reaction to this person was different from those of my friends. His self-glorification did not revolt me. Rather, it amused me and he seemed to me not a wicked fellow but a funny one. He was a character I liked to watch.

  Another equally interesting character whose company I thoroughly enjoy is a professor of a university, a peerless authority in his field but generally considered by others a crashing bore! He has this urge to project himself into every conversation, whatever the subject under discussion. He would say, ‘Yes, yes, I remember once I was in Geneva,’ for a casual remark that the weather is getting to be pretty warm. ‘It was a particularly nasty winter. I had been invited to a conference, you see. I was one of the four top people to address the conference. It was there that I made the famous statement that . . .

  I always enjoy his company and sit waiting with eager expectation to see with what ingenuity he would work into each subject that came up in the course of the conversation. Once he asked me how I got the ideas for my cartoons and how I set about my work. He seemed so earnest
and interested that I decided to take some pains to explain. But even before I had cleared my throat to begin, he started to describe his own daily routine: his morning walks, the evening cigars, the reading posture, the method of preparing for his classroom lectures and so on. At the end he said he was glad to learn so much about my work! This man is looked upon by others as a dreadful blight on social conversation. But I like his company. I can spend hours with him without getting bored, leading him on from the subject of disarmament to dandruff, then on to road repairs and sea voyages and await with suppressed delight his grand entry into each subject.

  There is another character I frequently run into. This one is tall and thin and reminds me curiously of a razor. His eyes are perenially red as if he has just come out of a fight. He is usually found at all cultural events sitting in the first row, whether it is music, dance, a puppet show or a play. One would think he was there to enjoy the evening. But no, such pleasures are for the philistines! He is a purist and believes in flagellation! He will sit there listening to the music and wince and squirm in his seat as if he were witnessing a bloody murder while his neighbours enjoy the performance with open-mouthed admiration. At the end of the programme he will come out, his eyes redder, still seething with rage, and announce that he felt like breaking the musical instrument over the head of the artist or choking the vocalist for ruining the musical composition, or for pronouncing the words wrong, or for being too slow or too fast. For him our ancient art of dancing is dead and what we have today in its place is a mere circus and it should be banned and the impostors prosecuted! According to this suffering aesthete all actors are hams, all paintings are a huge hoax played on the public and all forms of art are dead and what thrives today are only devices to torture his soul.

  I can recall many more such interesting types, proving thereby perhaps, in conclusion, that my normal vision is tinted by my profession after all! The world is, no doubt, full of serious-minded, decent, sane people who go to work, earn a living and take care of their families. But it would be a pretty drab world indeed if they really are what they seem and not a bit like what a cartoonist makes them out to be.

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  This collection published 2016

  Copyright © R.K. Laxman 2003

  The moral right of the author has been asserted

  ISBN: 978-0-143-03133-8

  This digital edition published in 2016.

  e-ISBN: 978-9-351-18000-5

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