Author: O V Vijayan
Publisher: Rupa
Year: 2002
Language: English
Pages: 116
ISBN/UPC (if available): 8171678831
Description
Between historical pessimism and imbecile revolution, there is a stretch of arid territory where the cartoonist retires to. It all begins in a lot of violence, and subsides as ingloriously as it had come. That is history. The cartoonist views it from his arid space and catches its absurdities and contradictions.
His cartoons may not make you laugh. Even when the contours of Vijayan's unique strokes tickle your imagination, the laughter, when it comes, comes salted with the inevitable sadness that their biting sarcasm evokes. Vijayan has drawn with painful awareness of the reality around him - and that is no laughing matter.
It was during the Emergency, when the elements of power in the country had taken their ugliest shapes, that Vijayan's cartoons lashed out best against the stink in the corridors of the establishment.
Contents
Laughter in a Mortuary: A Foreword by Ashis Nandy
The Tragic Idiom
The Father of Indian Political Cartoon: A Tribute to Shankar Pillai
My Mentor, K Shankar Pillai
National Lampoon
Requiem for the Foot Soldier
Vignettes
Vijayan the Cartoonist as a Development Critique by Sunder Ramanathaiyer