A dry, humourless, unsmiling Dr Manmohan Singh is not your run-of-the-mill politician. As a matter of fact, he isn’t a politician. He was not invented or designed for a cartoonist’s drawing board. In India, most of our Prime Ministers are “accidental” Prime Ministers. The PM’s chair is a lottery that some win — even without buying a ticket! P.V. Narasimha Rao (my favourite of them all), H.D. Deve Gowda, Chandra Shekhar, I.K. Gujral… all did. And so did my hero for the past decade or so — Dr Singh.
A man who steered the economic liberalisation of India in 1991, under P.V. Narasimha. Rao, quickly metamorphosed into a fine caricature. The best finance minister failed miserably as an economist when he became the Prime Minister. Look at the irony — the single-most striking failure of the great economist is economy! (Apart from many more) As FM, he had to share the cartoon space with his mentor, Rao. But when he became PM, he was in the big league. Now he qualified to be the main protagonist. But the trouble was he wasn’t hired to be the hero; he became one — by default. His persona wasn’t a dream-come-true for me. I was looking for some thing to highlight; to capture his spirit. His big forehead came to my rescue. I enlarged it even more than how I drew him during his FM days! His headgear hanging from the occipital part of his head — about to fall — but never did. I groomed his beard. Initially drew him in kurta-pyjama but later on stuck to a bundgala.
There are two types of leaders that became great cartoon material. One, who has too much power and the other who has none. Dr Singh fell into the second category. That was his USP. Initially, he was a bit difficult to capture. But within six months, like all other PMs, he began to shed his inhibitions and jumped on to my drawing board. A leader’s importance in politics can be measured by the number of cartoons he appears in. By that standard — I can truly say — Dr Singh is king.
Thank you, Dr Singh.
