From the ‘Common Man’ to ‘Shankar’s Weekly’, Indian cartoonists have held a caustic mirror to society. Their sharp-edged pens have brought to the fore swept-under-the-carpet issues that society refuses to confront. In the process, satire in print has also become an important tool of social awareness. Now it is going online, too. In the grim age of COVID-19, Kerala’s cartoonists are spreading a pandemic of optimism. Nipin Narayanan is one such exponent of irony.
His minimalistic strokes, at times interspersed with earthy colours but ever conscious and aware of the situation, are invitations to think, question and reject. His latest series of cartoons on the coronavirus outbreak aims to create awareness, while simultaneously providing hope about good times to come. Nipin is also a filmmaker who won critical acclaim for his short film, Arimpara, a drama-thriller.
His strip cartoons on COVID-19 heap praise on the dedicated medical staff battling the virus and express pride in the pro-activeness of the Kerala government while expressing exasperation towards the Centre, which he accuses of betraying the disadvantaged. Nipin’s first claim to fame were his strong sketches on the infamous Perumbavoor murder case.
Nipin’s colleague KB Harikumar, aka, Haku, has won high praise for his COVID-19 takeoffs. A cartoonist for over three decades, Haku believes that sketching for state agencies is a tricky affair, since the topics are mostly serious and require political correctness—not a cartoonist’s best side. He is a versatile conscience-keeper, focusing on the importance of hygiene for coronavirus awareness. Thampanoor police station in Kerala even displays five of his cartoons on its walls. His Facebook page is getting a lot of hits thanks to his ‘Corona toonz’.
Meanwhile, multilingual illustrator-cartoonist Sameera Maruda—famous for her Instagram handle @saltandsambar—is a very un-cartoonish graduate in Electronics and Communication Engineering, which she plays down on Facebook, and engages social issues through drawings. Like many woke millennials, she sells her work online. A YouTube influencer, Sameera has taken on the onerous task of busting myths around coronavirus through cartoons since she believes “unverified forwards are spreading faster than COVID-19”.
Cartoonists are in demand by governments too, even as they slowly vanish in the national media—an irony since a cartoonist’s first instinct is to lampoon governments. The Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare recently published a book of cartoons—Vaayu—to spread awareness on coronavirus. The Pali district administration in Rajasthan has done the same. Also, recently an Indo Tibetan Border Police soldier, Ganesh Prasad Shreshtha, won high praise for spreading awareness regarding COVID-19 through his cartoons, which went viral. Even in times of a contagion, in every life a little humour must fall.
Compiled with bureau inputs