By Shyam Pandharipande
IANS
Mumbai : From Gandhi's sprightly gait and Jinnah's disconcerting scowl to Nehru's princely visage and Maulana Azad's trademark stubble, he has seen it all. He could decipher every nuance of Indira's frown and decode the lack of expression on Narsimha Rao's face.
Shifting to Mumbai post "Malgudi Days", R.K. Laxman figured out a 'face from the crowd' and catapulted it to his cartoon frame. And there he stands forever – the Common Man, stealthily looking at the idiosyncrasies of the functional anarchy that is Indian democracy.
He glided from the corridors of power to the pavements of squalor, catching each wicked whisper and rustic wisecrack. The off sides of daises from where politicians declaimed poll promises and the doors of ministerial cabins from where obsequious 'babus' flurried in and out were his favourite vantage points.
Recently, theatre and television artist Ajit Kelkar brought alive R.K. Laxman's Common Man at the Ravindra Kala Mandir quadrangle in Prabhadevi, Mumbai. A large audience that included a few other artists enjoyed the show Saturday.
The 70-minute one-man show was the first stage presentation of the Common Man's fictitious autobiography. Kelkar narrated the Common Man's story in first person while an audio-visual sequence of 25 Laxman cartoons showed flashes of post-independence India's socio-political history.
Taking a cue from Laxman's autobiography, "Through the Tunnel of Time", theatre director and script writer Anil Joglekar wrote the Common Man's autobiography in Marathi and his son Gautam translated it into English.
Toying with the idea of bringing the Common Man onstage, Gautam asked Kelkar whether he would like to do it. The multiple award winning Marathi actor agreed and the show materialized.
"The narration happens at three levels," Kelkar told IANS. At one level, the Common Man tells his own story, at the second level he tells the audience about Laxman and his relationship with the legendary cartoonist and the story of how the cartoons were born comes at the next level, he explained.
While the audience seemed to enjoy the presentation and each cartoon displayed on the screen, one that took the cake was the post-emergency cartoon showing the Common Man rejoicing after the fall of Indira Gandhi's Congress government.
Another interesting cartoon showed Raj Narain denying Indira Gandhi the credit for bringing down the Janata government, saying he worked for it for two years!
The audience that was in splits all through the show, however, fell silent as the finale came in the shape of the Common Man's expression of hope that the show would motivate the insensitive 21st century society to shake away its lethargy and melt away its cynical indifference.
(Shyam Pandharipande can be contacted at [email protected])