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An innings full of thunder, an innings full of silence
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Be it through his literary oeuvre or his sketches, cartoonist-writer O.V. Vijayan has always been delivering food for thought to people, either salted with a prickly sadness that the stinging reality check evokes or haunted by a sombre vision of the future. Against the backdrop of his recently released collection, "A Cartoonist Remembers", SANGEETA BAROOAH PISHAROTY meets the great mind... .
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THE WORLD would remember cartoonist-writer O.V. Vijayan as one of the very few who added a connotation of sadness to the cartoon. With minimum use of words, he shook people out of amnesia to make them a party to the wrongs committed in society. Though that was yesterday, even now when you set your eyes on the 71-year-old veteran, his ailing, frail body, drooping eyes and freckled face at once speak to you, though in a language of silence.
Suffering from side effects of medication, Vijayan today can hardly speak, write or sketch - all of which catapulted him from a humble background to a position of fame and reverence he rightly deserves.
Sad you feel when he, despite wanting to talk or at times pen down replies to your queries, gets restricted most of the time, by the demands of his frail being. Sadder you become, when you think of how his voice once thundered from the pages of books and newspapers to wipe out general nonchalance about injustice commited in the society. Such was the impact of his brush that a look at his cartoons would make every viewer embarrassed, for each felt that he has knowingly or unknowingly become a party to the wrong being committed.
Writer, Cartoonist O.V. Vijayan in Delhi. — Photo: S. Subramanium.
Oh, how one now wishes to see Vijayan churning out page after page, sketch after sketch, "to debunk the claims of certitude that have flooded India's public life" as Ashis Nandy describes it in his forward to Vijayan's just released book, "A Cartoonist Remembers."
You hope that the book, a collection of his cartoons by Rupa & Co, fills the blank, at least by reminding people of a vibrant brush that dared to speak, to point out the shortfalls and made us read between the fine lines. At a time when the country's secular spirit is held hostage, when Hinduism is gradually being forced to cease being a way of life and becoming synonymous with right wing Hindutva ideology, when rabid patriotism is threatening to put all in peril, Vijayan's book seems a fitting entry to yet again remind people of a past that is gone, the present that was lived and the future that is to unfold.
Despite his present state, the enthusiasm to bring out some reaction on the present Indian scenario from the veteran whose political writings were noted for their visionary insights and clarity of thought, would push you to ask him whether he thinks Hinduism has been taken over by Hindutva? His still countenance fixes on you and slowly he pens down: Hinduism has infinite spaces, we should have experiment with ecumenism.
Finding his scribble a trifle difficult to read, you ask his wife for 37 years, Teresa Gabriel sitting beside him, for help, and she reads out: We should have places for praying together, we should make prayer a positive weapon... .it is possible to stay as a cultural Hindu.
You wish to know more. The fate of the Congress party, which he had deplored for "degeneration from the ideals of pre-independence era"; degradation of the environment; his forecast of a nuclear holocaust; numerous queries about his golden oeuvre of short stories and fiction; and the swerve of history. But it is too much of a load for this great mind, for now, he is mostly a slave to his frail form.
"Still, he is trying to write a piece on Indian cartoons for an Australian paper whenever he can," says Teresa, who accompanied Vijayan to Delhi from Kottayam, where they have been staying for some years now, for the release of his book by President K. R. Narayanan on July 29.
As you share Vijayan's vision, the rich collection of his work, his expression of ideas with his wife, a woman of admirable thoughts, slowly, Vijayan lifts a finger towards his book and utters a few words in Malaylam, his mother tongue, and Teresa then pulls the book to her side to show you his favourite cartoon - one made during the Emergency, a time when his sketches took an ugly shape to represent the "stink in the corridors of establishment."
Though cartoons can be called vistas of history, set in a particular space and time, Vijayan traversed beyond the limits of time and space to recall parallel historical happenings, delivering a simultaneous warning to us about the future silhouette of history. His cartoons, unlike many others, can hardly make one laugh. Even if they do, the laughter comes salted with the ingravescent sadness that their stinging sarcasm evokes.
In his book he succinctly describes the paradox of being "a Third World cartoonist" where - though "the dominant superstition" about his medium is that it should raise a laugh - "it is an unutterable sadness which punctuates the reality that I am called upon to portray... ."
And who can forget the two characters seen often in his cartoons - the father and his son of the Third World. Some said rightly that they are not mute, bewildered witnesses, or victims of circumstances, but respondents, representing the often hopeless depth of Indian realities. The father and the child stand for the generational gap of time, which, however, makes little difference in the quality of the lives of the individuals. They are representative of the silent majority who were made to dream a tryst with destiny over fifty years ago and are today forced to have a tryst with poverty and exploitation.
Teresa says both are planning to travel to Kolkata and Mumbai to hold an exhibition of Vijayan's cartoons, about 900 of them in total.
And, as you decide not to put any more pressure on the ailing person and take leave of the couple, Vijayan says a feeble "sorry", for not being able to reply to questions. Instead, you feel an instant urge to express your apologies to him for being a mute, selfish spectator to all the wrongs being committed in the society today.
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