KOCHI: Cartoonists are kind people. Since life is otherwise hard, they try to be kind to it. Unless, of course, they feel someone, somewhere, deserves to be mocked.
And once they find them, their kindness makes way to stinging satire and their hands work up lines and sketches that speak a thousand words. The outcome is an idea that slices into the system like a sharp knife and lays bare views that may present a stark, very different picture. Art happens, just almost as accidentally as leaders, even prime ministers, are made.
Advocate Haridas Balakrishnan’s tryst into cartooning was one such accident. His hat has many feathers — a professional lawyer, a writer, a columnist, and someone who dabbled in art when in college. His poetry has found its way into Sahitya Akademi’s magazine.
Yet cartooning was nowhere in his scheme of things though he had written extensively about famous cartoonists in his columns and followed them ardently for their craft, their views, and the political developments that could have prompted them to be legends in the field. However, in the period between the run-up to the Lok Sabha elections and till the results were declared, the artist felt the need to express himself through sketches that denote the political twists and turns the country witnessed. “I was always following political developments.
But what has been happening in the country over the past decade is something that causee me worry, especially about the challenges democracy was faci.
