Missing Mr. Bal Thackeray Only As a Cartoonist

Since late afternoon of November 17 2012 all shops- including medical ones- in our area are closed. Today November 18 we could NOT even get any milk in the morning. So far water is running in our taps. But who knows? Yes, we have no choice but to mourn the death. I remember how much I suffered as a bachelor in Mumbai for 3 days after Mrs. Indira Gandhi had died. On that day no Indian radio station was ready to say: Mrs. Gandhi was dead. My cable provider on November 18 blocked all TV channels except the news ones. Great men and women are forced to be mourned alike!

The Hindu,  November 19 2012:

"Mumbai’s communal fault lines were thoroughly exploited by Thackeray and his Sainiks, especially in the weeks after the demolition of the Babri Masjid in December 1992. As the Srikrishna Commission documents, Muslims were systematically killed in riots engineered by Sena leaders."

I do not want to say a word about Mr. Bal Thackeray as a politician but he was a good cartoonist. (Although not a great one in my books.)

I still remember his Marmik (मार्मिक) pictures. They were repetitive but funny. Funniest were of the late  Babu Jagjivan Ram's.




The cover of the late Mr. Thackeray's latest book featuring his cartoons

The only Thackeray- who played a big role in public life- I respect deeply is the late Prabodhankar Thackeray ( प्रबोधनकार ठाकरे),  one of the greatest sons of Maharashtra, indeed  India. I wish Maharashtra walked in his footsteps rather than his son's.

Wikipedia states: "Winston Churchill was an accomplished artist and took great pleasure in painting, especially after his resignation as First Lord of the Admiralty in 1915. He found a haven in art to overcome the spells of depression which he suffered throughout his life."

Amartya Sen wrote in Economic & Political Weekly February 16-22, 2008:

“…Winston Churchill’s famous remark that the Bengal famine of 1943 was caused by the tendency of people there to breed like rabbits belongs to this general tradition of blaming the colonial victim. This had a profound effect in crucially delaying famine relief in that disastrous and easily preventable famine. The demands of cultural nationalism merge well with the asymmetry of power and can have quite devastating effects…”

Estimates are that between 1.5 and 4 million people died of starvation, malnutrition and disease in that famine.

Artist: Charles E. Martin, The New Yorker,  6 February 1954

I wish Mr. Churchill did only painting and not politics!

I have yet to see cartoons drawn by others on Mr. Thackeray's departure but they will find it hard to beat Mr. Tailang .

Artist: Sudhir Tailang, The Asian Age, November 18 2012

Mr. Tailang achieves so much in this picture...Mr. Thackeray's first love was a drawing board...so he departs from there and not from his throne...departing paws...not shown in colour here but perhaps red...maybe a slight hesitation before the final leap into darkness...moving...