When The Toons Took Over The Table
Table Talk by Harshita Rao
This week, four cartoonists got together for a meal at Oh! Calcutta to take …er… a serious look at their trade
Cartoons are meant to make people laugh. But what about the ones that make you think? Welcome to the world of cartoonists, where everything serious, cynical, political or thought-provoking has humour as the backbone.
This week, Oh! Calcutta, the restaurant that serves authentic Bengali food, saw some serious discussion among four cartoonists. An oxymoron? Maybe… But cartoons are serious business these days. They provoke more emotions than an editorial ever can. Certain Danish cartoonists will vouch for that!
At the table, James Manalody of Asian Age, relishes the Daab Chingri and quips, “Actually, all cartoons are controversial, aren’t they?”
Everyone agrees. Freelancer Suresh Sawant concentrates on eating for a while and then ponders, “What is the future of political cartoons?”
“Nowadays, newspapers are bland… they don’t encourage political cartoons. So the near future is not so good. But in the long term, political cartoons will revive newspapers,” replies Hemant Morparia, another freelancer.
Midcourse, they wonder what the future is for cartoons as a career option. DNA’s very own cartoonist Manjul says, “Cartoonists nowadays acquire good drawing skills first and a sense of humour later. But cartoons are not about good drawing.”
Morparia agrees. “Drawing is the least important aspect of a cartoon,” he says.
Sawant throws in his view: “The atmosphere is responsible. Nowadays, kids go in for animation. There’s very little thinking.”
On what it needs to make a good cartoon, Manjul says, “There’s no fixed set of rules.”
“Sometimes, a cartoon idea comes in an instant. Sometimes it takes more than a couple of hours,” adds James.
Says Morparia, “A few times, readers interpret the cartoon much better than we mean them to. For example, I had drawn a cartoon about Bal Thackeray’s refusal to let an Indo-Pak cricket match happen. The caption was ‘Ball Taak Re’. I didn’t even realise it was a pun on his name till I was told about it.”
After a yummy dessert, our guests take leave of each other, promising to be in touch.
