Running on the Bank

Usha Laxman, his daughter-in-law and one of the founders of the R. K. Laxman Museum, which was inaugurated last year in Pune, said that his freelance work in corporate sectors like banking and management included colour, as did his work for calendars. Laxman created twelve cartoons for a calendar that the S. B. I. published. They were also possibly included in book by R. K. Seshadri, who has written on the banking sector, called ‘A Swadeshi Bank from South India: A History of the Indian Bank: 1907-1982’ (1982).

In a scene set at the S. B. I, Laxman plays on the suspicion that most people harbor of bankers who can’t be disassociated from the corrupt moneylenders, despite the emergence of professional private and public banks. After all Laxman was drawing these for a bank he was also critiquing. He maintains a balance by dressing every employee in smart formals, with an air of professionalism around them. The second cartoon depicts the relationship between banks and account holders, which has been explored by many storytellers like Ruskin Bond in stories such as ‘The Boy who broke the Bank’ where a rumour that a bank was going bankrupt prompted the townspeople, including a beggar, to demand their money back.

A Touch of Colour

Laxman was fascinated with colours since his childhood, and often went to outdoor sessions with artists, sketching natural landscapes. When he was in high school, he started attending art classes taken by a teacher, who had graduated from the J. J. School of Art. Laxman was critical of the European style of painting followed in art academies and institutions—finding that ‘high art’ didn’t give him the space to express his reality.

Here, he points out the difficulty of getting a loan from the bank in rural India. He uses embedded pictorial devices like the poster on the wall to tell us that the absurd exchange between the farmer and banker is happening at a ‘One-man village branch’, but the aspiration for financial inclusion is left unfulfilled. The conundrum of needing wealth to generate greater wealth extends to a middle-class customer at another State Bank branch in the city. Once again balancing his critique, he makes us see the clever professionalism of the bank employees through the meticulous cataloguing of their daily dealings—they do not miss a thing.

The influence of David Low

When he was in school, he started illustrating his brother, R. K. Narayan’s short stories for The Hindu. He also illustrated a special issue for a college magazine, which caught the attention of M. Sivaram, the editor of Koravanji, a new satirical magazine in Bangalore. He called upon his services after seeing Laxman’s work on the cover. Koravanji This was inspired by Punch— A magazine where cartoonist David Low was a frequent contributor. Laxman was inspired by David Low’s cartoons since his middle school years, when he accidentally found his cartoons in a newspaper at home. For many years, he would follow the style of Low’s cartoons, the kind of sketching that was involved, the satire and minimal dialogue.

Nala Ponnappa writes in the Economic and Political Weekly that it was only Laxman’s early cartoons which would bore similarities to Low. it can be argued that Low’s style, in fact, was visible in Laxman’s work all his life. This series, however, is quite different from Laxman’s regular style. He controlled the reader’s gaze by shading some portions of his sketch, while here, it borders on maximalism. Some of Low’s cartoons contain a single line of dialogue in one corner, which is what Laxman attempted too, in these works.

Here, Laxman gives a snapshot of a middle-class household and reflects on the difficulty in getting loan money back. Here too, a State Bank calendar can be seen on the wall, cheekily relating larger questions of financial policy to everyday interactions and realities. Moreover, Laxman cheekily suggests the widespread influence of the bank within the middle-class home. All the cartoons have the S. B. I. calendar hanging from a wall.

While a brilliant cartoonist, Laxman’s biases as a male artist cannot be missed, considering the second cartoon, where he imagines the middle-class Indian woman as someone who does not know how to manage her finances and is one of the prime reasons for most of the household expense. This is not a sentiment which Laxman alone held but reflects a prevalent stereotype.

Caricature: An Inferior Art?

While still in school, he entertained the desire to attend the J. J. School of Art. However, the J. J. School denied him admission since they did not consider his caricatures a serious form of art. Laxman would also not participate in local art competitions when he was younger since caricatures and cartoons were not allowed.

When looking for work, he would face a different kind of prejudice. Laxman’s career, before he joined the Times would also reveal the inherent politics within newspaper offices, when he would not be offered a position even if his work was good, because the editor would be afraid that the current in-house cartoonist would not be too happy. After he went to see the editor of Hindustan Times, the editor was quite impressed with his work, but could not offer him a job and risk the ire of the veteran cartoonist. A cartoonist could not do anything with empty praises and the figures in his cartoons could not do anything without money. In this cartoon, he showcases a half-built house, construction on which was halted following a lack of finances. This was a common fate that many state-funded universities or even personal home projects had, where some floors were not built due to lack of funds. Construction resumed once funds were received. He does not seem to be praising S. B. I. in any way here.

After Laxman completed his studies from Maharaja’s College, University of Mysore, he was always on the lookout for freelance work which could also cover his expenses of living in the different cities he resided in. Laxman was from a wealthy family, but occasionally he struggled with money, which led to his brother writing a short story on him called ‘Dodu the Money Maker’ about a boy who needed money to buy peanuts. For Laxman, in high school, money seemed to be an aspect which preoccupied him a lot, as seen in this cartoon, among the other themes that he was working with. Managing finances was truly like pulling teeth.