Rasipuram Krishnaswami Laxman (24 October 1921 – 26 January 2015) was an Indian cartoonist, illustrator, and humorist. He is best known for his creation The Common Man and for his daily cartoon strip, "You Said It" in The Times of India, which started in 1951.
R K Laxman, the country's best-known cartoonist, passed away on the evening of January 26, at the Dinanath Mangeshkar hospital in Pune, where he was on life support for the past few days. He was 93.
Born in 1921 in Mysore, Laxman had no formal training in cartooning but the work he put out over decades was sheer genius. He began by drawing for local papers, and illustrating the stories of his famous elder brother, novelist R K Narayan, while still at college.
The recipient of numerous awards, among them the Padma Bhushan, Padma Vibhushan and Magsaysay Award, Laxman's fan base ran into millions. He never let them down, drawing two cartoons a day, always brilliant, with consummate ease. His Common Man, created in 1957, was the symbol of India's ordinary people, their trials and tribulations, their little joys and sorrows, and the mess they found themselves in thanks to the political class and bureaucracy. But despite the sobering reality of this, there was never any rancour in Laxman's cartoons. His humour was always delightful, and no one could hold a candle to his brushstrokes.
"Laxman was not just a cartoonist - through his cartoons will inspire future governments...Though he is no more, The Common Man he created will live forever,"
Here is some of his cartoons...
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