The Burden Of Humour

Memory brought back a hot Delhi afternoon in 1990 in pursuit of Vijayan. I was launching a morning paper and desperate for a political cartoonist. Vijayan’s feeble voice, when we met, was at once courteous and distant. Yes, he needed the money and the sum we offered was no doubt tempting. But he was finished with the business. And he was unwell. "Try somebody else," he suggested. "Your readers may not like what I draw." There was such dignified fatigue in his rejection, such terminal disillusionment with the whole enterprise of seducing anonymous patrons to laugh three times a week, that I returned with sullen admiration.

My second motive for purloining the book has been a life-long curiosity in political cartooning and caricature, and an equal, if not greater, interest in the intellectual and private history of people whose only tools at work are human duplicity, boorishness, frailty, conceit, hypocrisy and triple-speak. That some of the world’s greatest cartoonists have needed psychiatric help—a member of the trade (Vicky), who aficionados put a couple of notches above David Low, was driven to suicide—has further fuelled my interest.

Happily, there are no suicidal streaks in Vijayan, but this pungent, wry, brilliant and provocative bunch of memories are profoundly depressing to read. The despair, the sense of hopelessness, the futility of journalism as a calling (cartooning, in my view, is a superior genre of journalism) in India are all powerfully rendered. Yet, somewhere along the line Vijayan has got it all wrong. These notes and "compromises" are the musings of a professional pessimist not a professional cartoonist.

The fundamental flaw is visible early on. Vijayan declares grandly that he is enormously, even critically, burdened because he is mandated to "raise a laugh" in a society where the obscenities of an unequal life cripple the imagination. He is, in short, that degraded creature called "third world cartoonist" who possesses none of the certitudes and intellectual cushioning of his first world colleague. Therefore, he can only produce tears—a commodity strictly banned by his editors.

While the third world cartoonist’s burden cannot be wished away, it is also a copout. The challenge and professional satisfaction for the desi drawer is infinitely greater. If you are employed in downtown Manhattan, making New Yorkers laugh is rather easy. In New Delhi, meanwhile, comedy requires to be blended with tragedy to portray reality. To say this combination is impossible to achieve is arguable and finally false.

Tragedy (or tears) actually is the easier response to induce, simply, because you do not have to look very far. But comedy too surrounds us. In fact, in public life at least there is an embarrassment of riches. Consider the socialist George Fernandes now nearly a card-carrying member of the VHP. Consider the Congress loudly denouncing the carnage in Gujarat while dodging their own 1984 pogrom against Sikhs. Consider the many faces of A.B. Vajpayee, each on display from Monday to Friday. Consider the dialectical contortions of Vijayan’s erstwhile comrades as they welcome the IMF into Calcutta.

Any cartoonist in our republic who claims that a third world practitioner cannot raise laughter and tears simultaneously is either incompetent (which Vijayan is not) or is looking at the wrong corridors.

The foundation of the Vijayan dilemma is quickly identifiable: his consistent worship of false gods. Their betrayal has left him prodigiously bitter. The first and biggest betrayer, of course, is Communism in all its varieties and hues. A Cartoonist Remembers has some wonderfully witty and instructive sketches of Communist politicians and leftist editors who were unable or unwilling to recognise the Great Revolution as one cruel joke. And here Vijayan’s own innocence shines brightly.

A cartoonist must send up everything. Left, Right, Centre, Far Left, Far Right.... Indeed, he should begin his trade on the assumption that betrayal is inherent and implicit. Vijayan might see this as blasphemous, but a cartoonist needs to be folly-driven, not ideology-driven. To make distinctions between first and third world is an alibi, not a justification.

If anything, it is the third world cartoonist who needs to watch out or "leaders", "isms" and "messiahs" because while despots and frauds are global phenomena, the native varieties are especially vicious and enduring.

Vijayan is spot-on about the debasement of the political cartoon in present day print publishing. The brief moments I had as a newspaper editor were, by and large, spent pursuing the "good cartoon" for the morning edition, for I knew possessing one ensured that my front page was made.

If I was the cultural dictator of India, I would make this book essential reading for journalists. And fellow travellers.