The Hindu Business Line : The young and restless… always inspiring

They were Rajiv Gandhi years. Looking like a freshly stitched shirt from a Fab India store, the gentleman pulled in the young minds of the time. The other day at the no confidence motion in the Lok Sabha, his son, Rahul Gandhi should have got the young on his side. He admitted to not being so young any more; he was more than fair in giving credit to Vajpayee for initiating the nuclear deal; he also broke into a few smiles. It was an ordinary performance but none did well over two days in the Lok Sabha.

Over time, Rahul may turn stale like some of the noisy, doddering elders in the Lok Sabha. Like the elders, who have wasted years of the Indian nation, Rahul Gandhi, like his father, could lose his way. For the moment, however, this writer will back Rahul Gandhi and his sister Priyanka, who alone lent a swish of style to Parliament. The First Family of India is distinctive. Take it from this 62-year old, Young is beautiful.

One could not entirely follow the live proceedings on the TV channels (one stuck to the sobriety of Prannoy Roy and NDTV) as Shreya, my grand-daughter, insisted on her daily diet of Pogo and Cartoon Network. After her afternoon nap, she slips into her chair with a packet of Lays or an apple and orders one to switch on the TV. For at least 30 minutes, the Lady cannot be disturbed. Over the last week, she has been spending time with her four-day- old sister giving the family a chance to watch their channels in peace.

At the day-school, she has put in a demand for a TV set, said the school teacher. “Is that an unfair demand,” one asked politely and the teacher requested me to leave the school. With no playgrounds, no trees to climb, no sand and earth to roll on, children in Mumbai have only Pogo and Cartoon Network to remain as children. Not many relish the cartoon mythologicals as there is little to laugh.

Shreya enjoys the dog Snoopy in Peanuts (and tries to draw her own dog) though one’s favourite are the thinking or human dogs etched in soft lines by James Thurber. Most of the stray dogs in Borivili look like they have walked out of Thurber. But this habit of reading and watching cartoons was something Rajiv Gandhi confessed to and got the intellectuals frothing. If one’s memory holds, there were howls all over – a Prime Minister reading comics and not stony tomes written by Marx and Lenin!

Cartoonists like Laxman were joyous and fair enough they ribbed Rajiv well to give readers a few early morning smiles. Possibly, Rajiv Gandhi had no company for trading a few guffaws and cartoons were the way out. By the time Rajiv came to power Indians had stopped laughing and preferred religious titles promising front rows in heavens, wherever it is. Yet another negative is most newspaper readers prefer political cartoons and there is little of the Peanuts genre in India. The Ramayana and Mahabharata of Amar Chitra Katha fame carried illustrations of a doubtful quality and had decidedly no laughter. One is not sure of the evolution of the cartoon strips (including political pieces) though it could boast of a healthy, American lineage.

This writer has been a comics addict and in recent times one waits eagerly for Peanuts and The Born Loser; most newspapers have little space for comics, which is sad.

At school, one sat on the last bench to enjoy Roy Rogers, the Lone Ranger, Donald Duck, and many others which now slip the mind. One would like to spend a couple of days with my friend Giri at Nagpur to consume his comics collection, picked up from Matunga, over a drink. The other friend owning a comics library is Murali Gopalan, living in Thane. It is a queer phenomenon world over – a Wodehouse, a Thurber, a Mark Twain, a Benchley, a Behram Contractor (Busybee), Peanuts, and many such are passed over for prestigious awards. They are not slotted as fine reading.

Luckily, my friend Ramamurthy, whom one bumps into the mornings, loves Wodehouse. “Ah, Wooster,” he exclaimed the other day. To be great literature, the writers have to exhibit a compulsory cruelty and sadness to leave the reader totally unhappy as he turns over the last page; it is more like seeing the art films of Adoor Gopalakrishnan. It is wonky logic and one is proud Rajiv Gandhi defied the norm. If Rajiv had been around, he would have enjoyed the book – Peanuts: A Golden Celebration, the art and story of the world’s best-loved comic strip. One bought the special, colour edition from the Strand Book House at Rs 500.

A barber’s son, Charles M. Schulz has been cartooning for 50 long years and puts down the effort to observation – “It is extremely important for a cartoonist to be a person of observation. He not only has to observe the strange things that people do and listen to the strange things that they say, but he also has to be reasonably observant as to the appearance of objects in the world around him. .. A short while ago, the phone rang in our house, about 7.15 in the morning. My wife, Jeannie answered it. It was a young girl calling from Midwest. She said, “My friends and I are having an argument. Is Mr. Schulz still alive?” Jeannie said, “I just saw him in the bedroom about ten seconds ago.” So the girl said, “Oh well, I guess I lose the bet then.”

“Considering what some of Charlie Brown’s friends say, I must admit that things like this are not totally lost on me. Even useful.

To create something out of nothing is a wonderful experience. To take a blank piece of paper and continue drawing with the same pen and materials as when I started the strip in 1950 is a real privilege. To draw characters that people love and worry about is extremely satisfying. I am happy that I have been allowed to do it for 50 years.”

United Feature Syndicated dubbed the strip – Peanuts and Schulz was horrified but he went along. Schulz has created a family of characters though the popular ones are Charlie Brown, Snoopy (mixed breed) and Linus.

My choice is Linus dragging along a blanket, inspired by the blankets Schulz’s children carted at home and “security blanket” had not come into American use.

P. Devarajan