During my two years of study in New Delhi, one Sunday every month was with Shankar over lunch at his residence. My tribute to the father of Indian cartooning - the life, work, times, and contribution of Shankar.
As an overview, the post covers Shankar’s early life and his stint in Bombay, where he met and worked with B.G. Horniman and Pothan Joseph. Later, Pothan Joseph invited him to Hindustan Times, where Shankar worked for 12 years. After he departed from the Hindustan Times, Gandhi asked Shankar whether Hindustan Times developed him or he developed Hindustan Times.
During his tenure at Hindustan Times, Shankar was on sabbatical in London for about fifteen months. During this period, he sharpened his craft while gaining global exposure. After his return, Shankar soon established himself as an independent force. On being eased out of Hindustan Times before independence, Shankar initially became the editor of The Indian News Chronicle.
Later, in the first year of independence, Shankar established ‘Shankar’s Weekly’, which influenced public opinion as India's Punch for close to three decades. However, Shankar closed the Weekly within a month after Indira Gandhi declared an Emergency in June 1975.
Apart from grooming about two generations of cartoonists, Shankar’s other significant contributions include the Children’s Book Trust and the Doll’s Museum. Read more in the post. It is a bit long at around 9.6k words, but hyperlinks provide easy navigation.
Postscript
An old friend of over four decades wrote to ask how long I took to write this piece on Shankar with all the research that went into it. So, for others also who might be interested, it is as follows:
I opened the first draft file on 7 November 2021. That was soon after I spoke to Shankar's daughter, Yamuna.
After much procrastination, I purchased the recent biography of Shankar in Malayalam on 15 February 2022 from the Lalit Kala Akademi Trivandrum.
On 3 March 2022, I completed the first draft after reading the book and a few others. For me, this is almost always an information dump. This draft also included my thoughts, beginnings, endings, anecdotes, keywords, etc.
I was also working parallelly on a book review, which was quite challenging.
The week between 3 and 10 March was when I did the actual drafting. That was around 80% of the work.
I had planned to post it on the 10th. Working with a target was what helped me finish it soon. I also wanted the whole thing out of my system.
The work left me completely sapped out for two days.