This ‘mimic man’ as Homi Bhabha would term it, appears as the next cartoon in Indian Cartoons, which is by Gaganendranath Tagore, himself. The Bengal artist would initially publish this as part of his second folio of caricatures called ‘Adbhut Lok: Realm of the Absurd’ printed a few years ago in 1917 using his private lithographic press – which he called the Vichitra Press. ‘This split subject is Gaganendranath’s ‘Hybrid Bengalensis’,’ writes Sanjukta Sunderason in ‘Arts of Contradiction: Gaganendranath Tagore and the Caricatural Aesthetic of Colonial India’ (2016), ‘In his hybridity, this ‘species’ however, is an ironic embodiment of the colonial uncanny…in his whims, this curious species reminds us of Sukumar Ray’s hybrid animals from his nonsense rhymes from the same period– the duckupine, the storkoise, and the elewhale – though unlike them the hybrid babu is unaware of his own awkward composition. In his smug poise, he is a curious presence, at once incongruous, proud, and fragile.’

The figure of the puppet man is assembled as a collage of artefacts, much like the figure in Roy’s illustration. The babu wears the conventional dhoti-kurta, accessorised with a cigarette, a decorative scarf, an embellished walking stick and heeled shoes resembling ballroom footwear, complete with bows. While colonial discourse stereotyped Bengali men as effeminate, Tagore turns this charge around, portraying the babu who imitates foreign styles as an inferior, even dispensable figure whose presence offers little to society. Here, he strides ahead, berating his wife, whom he treats as little more than a beast of burden. His children, too, embody this cultural hybridity: the elder boy wears a hat, while the young girl sports an imported frock that appears ill-fitting. Whether this awkwardness is intentional or simply a consequence of the limited space available for her figure remains uncertain.

B. Gangooly himself contributes two cartoons on the hapless office worker, navigating his way through the colonial system of authority, where appeasing the Bengali babu becomes more important – and daunting – than satisfying the English sahib. In ‘Situation Vacant’ he sketches a young graduate dressed in his graduation attire as if he arrived right after receiving his degree, begging the Head Clerk to give him the advertised job. His pleas are supplemented with a basket of vegetables and fish – as a boomerang with the words twenty rupees inscribed on it, hangs from his pocket.

Bribery had become a fairly common practice by then. M. B. Lal noted in 'How our British rulers 'legalised bribery' that a fee or commission was exchanged openly across the table; adding that 'It only enabled the government to keep its employees contented with small salaries and run the administration on a low budget while allowing the employees to help themselves with extra pickings from the public as perks of their jobs.'

That Gangooly was an experienced artist comes through in his draughtsmanship and the way he renders silhouettes in darker and simpler lines like the graduate’s coat or the clerk’s dhoti, controlling our gaze masterfully – his sharp and short lines marking body hair on the clerk or a face mostly dominated by an awry moustache, recalls the simpler exaggeration of Sukumar Ray’s illustrations in ‘Abol Tabol’ which would periodically appear in ‘Sandesh’ magazine from 1915.

In Gangooly’s second and final cartoon, a frazzled member of the Holker police force is rendered effeminately through his defensive posture, feet held together and hands hanging apprehensively by his sides. The incident prompting this depiction remains unclear. In a similar cartoon, attributed to a Miss Macleod, a pot-bellied Bengali police inspector appears more aggressive, his unkempt moustache lending him a provocative air. This may be among the earliest caricatures to portray a Bengali police officer as potentially threatening. The artist may have been Josephine MacLeod, an American who accompanied Vivekananda to India after hearing his lectures in Chicago and London. As Yasuko Horioka notes, MacLeod later met Okakura Tenshin in Japan, where she took lessons in Japanese art history. Okakura subsequently travelled to India and met Rabindranath Tagore. MacLeod may have accompanied him, gaining familiarity with the Bengal School, and later produced an ink sketch of Mukul Dey. These connections make her a plausible, though unconfirmed, candidate for the cartoon’s authorship.

Philip Greaves is another unknown artist, who seems to have already developed a lucid style of figuration – and likely contributed cartoons to the colonial English newspapers considering his universally humorous choice of subjects. This is the only ‘apolitical’ segment in the periodical, which makes one wonder what made Gangooly make way for more light-hearted humour. Greaves who contributed three cartoons—the same amount as Gaganendranath, in an eleven-page cartoon periodical which solidifies his then established stature as a cartoonist – unfortunately still untraceable today. In one, a daughter beseechs her father to miss the ‘soup’—or get into yet another complication – as she had a headache. Continuing the family drama—and in yet another reference to Shakespeare – he contributes the very first comic strip in the periodical where a child cries wolf and his father hurries over only to realise his son wanted peanuts.

In this final cartoon by Greaves, two old British men who have settled in Calcutta stroll about in the morning on the Maidan – one of them quite earnestly saying how it was the only way they could show off their figures. Gangooly added a very traditional advertising strategy in the first few pages of his book – perhaps taking from posters himself. ‘A novel treat to art lovers,’ it promised in bold, ‘Educative, Delightful and Unique Collections’. It also says that this was meant to be a quarterly publication, but no more issues of the periodical have been found – which leads one to ask whether it was not received well, or whether the artists themselves got involved in other political and social efforts – or did not continue making cartoons at all.