Tags:
Journalism of Courage
Cartoonist EP Unny fondly recalls his days as an undergraduate student of physics at Government Victoria College in Palakkad in the ’70s. During summer vacations, he would travel to Bengaluru with his friends to purchase books that were not available in Kerala. The short visits were usually preceded with drawing up a list of coveted publications. Captivated by the metropolis, he had been intending to sketch it for years and finally planned a one-week trip in 2019. “These were locations recommended by friends. There was no specific purpose or project in mind,” says Unny, 66, chief political cartoonist, The Indian Express.
The set of 11 sketches of the Garden City come together with almost 100 political cartoons, published in The Indian Express, in an exhibition at the Indian Cartoon Gallery in Bengaluru. Seemingly disparate, the fine lines of the sketches that detail the Bengaluru locations might be thinner and denser than the thick strokes of his caricatures but when the two come together, it is a showcase of his varied engagements as an artist and his myriad pursuits. If the latter illustrates sarcasm, wit and commentary, the former brings stillness to the locations of the bustling city, each etched with the time when the sketch was made. “Some cartoonists like to sketch, it rejuvenates the lines. I sketch live and no changes are made later,” says the Delhi-based Unny.
Visiting Bengaluru for decades, he notes how its demographics has changed from a leisurely slow-paced city suitable for retired life to an educational hub and now an IT headquarters. The viewer partakes of this change through his sketches that chart this development in subtle ways. On the one hand are tourist haunts — the majestic Bangalore Palace with its turreted walls and towers; the neoclassical building of the Government Museum, Bangalore, built in 1877; the Flower Market in Malleswaram, decorated with hanging garlands and baskets filled with flowers; the historic Russell Market, built by the British in 1927; on the other, the new face of modern Bengaluru — the Baiyappanahalli Metro station and the infamous Bengaluru traffic that Unny documents outside the Book Society building on the busy St Mark’s Road.
While his travel diaries include other cityscapes, including Kochi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Thiruvananthapuram and Chennai, the cartoonist was also a participant in, and chronicler of, the 2016-17 Kochi-Muziris Biennale, where he live-sketched at the event through its three-month duration and also had a display of his pocket cartoons from The Indian Express.
The ongoing exhibition in Bengaluru inadvertently seems to take that showcase forward. Though not interconnected, the selection, from 2008 to 2019, depicts how Indian democracy has evolved since. “When a dominant party runs the country, there aren’t too many politicians making news. This happened at the height of Indira Gandhi’s era and again, now. But it’s not (Narendra) Modi making much news, it is Amit Shah. He is the Chanakya who gets thrown in cartoons and also lends himself to them,” says Unny. The cartoons at the exhibition, he says, “broadly tell the story of the (last) 11 years.” From a dig at PM Modi’s constant touring to Congress MPs Sonia and Rahul Gandhi counting their allies at the 2015 iftar party, from Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal presenting himself as the man for the middle class to a poker-faced Jayalalithaa announcing curbs on alcohol after taking over as Tamil Nadu chief minister in May 2016, the display, predictably, includes prominent political faces. Unny counts P Chidambaram and Nirmala Sitharaman among politicians who are more challenging to caricature. “If a part of the face is exaggerated, the resemblance is lost and the caricature fails,” he says.
Portraits apart, political events and issues also feature in the exhibition — from the farmer’s 2018 rally to Delhi, to the 2020 flight ban of stand-up comedian Kunal Kamra after he allegedly heckled television news anchor Arnab Goswami on a flight. “We are a news-hungry paper and the cartoons have to keep pace with the news. Since we focus on the latest developments, these also date quickly,” says Unny.
Born in Palakkad, Kerala, Unny recalls looking forward to filmmaker G Aravindan’s satirical cartoon series Cheriya Manushyarum Valiya Lokavum that appeared weekly in Mathrubhumi. In the ’70s, he would analyse the simplicity and tact with which Abu Abraham depicted “what was happening in the Capital” in his cartoons in The Indian Express, and pored over Rajinder Puri’s India 1969: a Crisis of Conscience that commented on the Congress leadership under Indira Gandhi. As a student, teachers would often be the protagonists of his cartoons. But in 1972, Unny sketched his first political cartoon, published in Shankar’s Weekly, on the Vietnam War. Soon, he became a regular contributor to the weekly. It prompted Shankar to send him a letter, dictated to his aide Ramakrishnan, advising Unny on the basics of drawing caricatures. He has lost the letter, but Unny still adheres to the advice: To master the art of caricature, one needs to get the resemblance right before distorting it.
