Renowned cartoonist and creator of the ‘Common Man’, R.K. Laxman, passed away at the Deenanath Mangeshkar hospital in Pune on Monday evening at the age of 93.
Laxman was battling a severe urinary tract infection and kidney failure and was put back on mechanical ventilator support after his health deteriorated, becoming “very critical” since Sunday evening. Incidentally, he was taken off the ventilator last week after his health showed marginal but steady improvement, kindling hopes of a possible recovery.
Two names that come to everybody’s mind when asked about the greatest exports of Mysore for the world are RK Narayan and his younger brother RK Laxman. Rashipuram Krishnaswamy Iyer Narayanaswamy, better known as RK Narayan, introduced early 20th century India to the West through his fiction. It wouldn’t be wrong to say that Narayan immortalised Mysore by creating an imaginary town called Malgudi.
Generations of Indians grew up reading Laxman’s pocket cortoon in The Times of India. Narayan wrote about common people and their extraordinary lives. Laxman gave them a voice through his cartoons. Mysore has a great literary tradition and its best representative in the English language happen to be Narayan and Laxman.
These brothers tapped into the educated middle class experience, the very class that reads their fiction and cartoons, even today.