The earliest memory of Abu is the pocket cartoon ‘Private View’ which had virtually nothing but two Congressmen as permanent fixtures. Some days the short and fat one carried a long-lasting 3-ply wood placard that said ‘Quit Poverty!’ or his tall companion raised a toast to Morarjibhai’s prohibition drive.Beyond these restricted political activities, these minimal characters did as little as our political bosses. It was the first talking-head cartoon here. To the Indian eye this was a clear departure. Our cartoons then and now pack a great deal of detailed articulation into even the single column. Yet the sparse Abu cartoon brought to the diverse Indian Express readers spanning cities to small towns the thrust and parry of national politics with no fuss.The leisurely ambience of the cartoon was an interesting contrast to the pace of politics then. Which for the first time was gathering post-Nehruvian pace. The grand old Congress Party was splitting, mouthing radical socialism, creating more and more government with more and more backdoors and Indira was inevitably becoming India at least on the All Indira Radio. Nothing seemed to prompt Abu’s Congressmen into visual acrobatics and nothing took away from the cartoon its essential reflective air. This reluctance to over-draw is even stranger for a man who loved to travel and sketch.Abu leaves behind a repertoire of caricatures and life studies that approximates to pure art—from Che Guevera and Castro to Vietnam and the Kerala coast. His was the mastery of the one who could suggest form, flow, light and shade with a measured undulating brush stroke. When he needed to draw that extra line to visualise elaborately, Abu did it in his display cartoons.And he did it with a certain finality. Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed in your mind and mine will never put aside those ordinances he was signing away and emerge from his presidential bathtub. And Richard Nixon shall forever remain a plaque on the White House wall: ‘‘Richard M Nixon lied here -1964-1972’’. Abu gave a readership that was getting increasingly distracted striking visual mnemonics. When the country’s politics itself became multi-centric and far too fragmented for the Abu touch, he retired to ‘Saranya’, his Laurie Baker-built cottage in Thiruvananthapuram. From where you often came away sensing the same unhurried elegance that marked his work.
