K J Yesudas caricature show

It was a nice gathering, all who just wanted to be part of the shared happiness. It's always like that at The Orthic Creative Centre that Kaladharan lovingly keeps afloat. There were two Yesudases, one, the singing sensation and the other, the cartoonist veteran. There was more for the lucky crowd. Toms, whose Boban and Molly are like siblings to two or three generations. The coffee table book that was brought out with caricatures of Yesudas, the singer was launched after the short and sweet speeches. This was the occasion for which the packed hall waited. The Cartoonists Academy and Kaladharan must be thanked for bringing them together and for making it all so homely, with chai and smiles. Yesudasan (cartoonist)came out with his humour armoury (he calls himself, the Yesudas who does not sing!)and spoke of the time the rumour was floated that both Yesudases had died. He spiced it with the expressions he saw etc. He chose to call Yesudas, the singer Dasettan though he was much older, he said, but the reason was not clear. Yesudas, on the other hand, spoke of the time he drew a cartoon, once,in anger, of head load workers carrying the body of a man who had four sons. They refused to let the sons carry the body, for the head load workers thought it was their job! Of course he sang four lines of the religious harmony song. And when he left, he told me and Pradeep again about the cartoon he had drawn, of the headload workers..etc..It was the first time I met him. Pradeep just introduced me but I of course felt that I had known him all along! Thanks, Kaladharan, for making this possible. One can't even say his is a no-profit-no-loss job of love, because I think it's mostly a loss venture, but then, Kaladharan doesn't care. Not for him the luxuries and big fat cars that 'artists' who are better businessmen manage to corner. Kaladharan has done more for art in Kerala than any one else in the modern era,I believe. Of the caricatures displayed, those that are in the book, they have myriad expressions, moods and some have deiva ganam looks while others have asura ganam visages! Manmadhan and me enjoyed the outing.

In the land of Khasak again

(This was published in the Hindu Metro PLus on April 2)
By Prema Manmadhan
Artists and friends got together to pay tribute to the enigmatic O. V. Vijayan on his sixth death anniversary

From Palakkad, he gravitated to the capital, where he spent a great chunk of his professional time and in the evening of his life, O. V. Vijayan made Kottayam his home for a short time, before moving to Hyderabad which turned out to be the last place he lived in. That was exactly six years ago. But he always belonged to Kerala, in his works, in his mind and in his very being, for one does not forget one's childhood and mother tongue.

And on March 30, they were there, all those who knew the thespian at some point in his life, despite the World Cup, on the sixth death anniversary of cartoonist-writer-thinker O.V.Vijayan. The mood at Nanappa Gallery at Orthic Creative Centre in the city was nostalgic, the crowd ready to pay homage to a man who never really got the recognition he deserved, for he always lay low, with a pronounced dislike for attention: An introvert extraordinaire. The visual media made him uncomfortable.

Memories abound

The four walls of the gallery had everything that T. Kaladharan, the organiser, could muster in a short time: Framed photostat copies of Vijayan's published cartoons, all that hit the nail right on the head, paintings that depicted either the cartoonist-writer or the characters in his famous novels and even three sculptures. The Cartoon Academy rose to the occasion and collected a good number of Vijayan's all-time great cartoons, from the time of the language agitation in 1958, one which had the words, ‘linguisticks' in it, to the ones in the Emergency and where EMS features, also from the pre-split days of the CPI. A study of these could give the new generation an idea of the standard of cartoons in those days and also more than flashes of brilliance in the department of cartoons. A sizeable number of the Academy's members drew sketches of Vijayan too.

At the gathering a few remembered their associations with him and two short documentaries, by K. M. Madhusoodan and Jyothiprakash were shown, dwelling much on the writer's seminal work, ‘Khazakkinte Ithihasam', which became even bigger than the writer himself. Manarcadu Mathew, who knew Vijayan for many years, was the chief guest. He spoke of the days he had a professional relationship with him at first and later it turned personal, when he met him many times in Delhi, where he used to live. K.N.Shaji, freelance journalist, said he used to meet Vijayan almost every day at one point of his life, while in Delhi. “He welcomed me, a young man with no job, with the same exuberance as he would a notable personality. We would sit and chat for long. I would have dinner in his house and leave…I learnt so much from a man who lived by his own rules,” he said.

Somananathan Nair (Nadhan) remembered how, as a young man, he was drawing for ‘Shankar's Weekly' and got in touch with Vijayan to get some advice. “He wrote me many letters giving me tips and commenting on cartoons and cartoonists so that I could learn more. He was the best in those days and I was just starting, sometime in the early seventies and yet, he took time to write to me. I have just one letter with me now,” he said and read it out to the gathering. One of the four cardinal rules, he had advised Nadhan, was not to oversimplify a cartoon. That is the essence of all Vijayan cartoons, you realise. The letter contained bold remarks about the famous cartoonists of the period apart from clear instructions on how to improve the drawings. Prasannan Anikkad also spoke.

The characters in ‘Khazakkinte Ithihasam' came to life in some paintings. Artist Namboodiri's sketch brought out much more than the man's physical appearance. K. K. Rajappan, K. P. Soman, C. S, Jayaram, Kaladharan and P.V.Krishnan are the senior artists on show. Three of the paintings were based on ‘Khazakkinte Ithihasam', the old house in Pramod Korampala's work, in K. M. Narayanan's painting and Appukkili in C. R. Manmadhan's work. A few were based on ‘Kadaltheeram', Vijayan's story. Unni, Keshav, Jayachandran, Ajoy, Dinesh R Shenoy, Varghese Kalathil, Binuraj, Rajeev, Sherin Satheesh, Satheesh Babu, T.V.G. Menon, Sajjive, Prasannan Anikkad, Sudhirnath, K. M. Narayanan are the others whose works or photocopies of works are here.

Little known facts

Little known facts about Vijayan were exchanged among the people at the meeting, that he was scared of spiders, though everyone knew how much he loved cats.

This writer was his neighbour for some time, while he lived in Kottayam. He told me then that his next novel (that never happened), ‘Padmatheertham', was all ready in his mind and it just needed to be transferred on to paper. It died with him. He had never used a computer and never ever got to see the number of pages that came on screen if his name was Googled. When this fact was conveyed to him, he looked up, astonished, wondering how it could be possible. He used his pen lavishly in his last years because of his disability to speak and would write a comment as and when he wanted to express something while watching a TV programme. And that equalled a cartoon, always.

And he loved fish curry, the man who contributed so much to the printed word and drawing but never ever got what he deserved in the world of letters.