Brushing Up the Years

I read the book Brushing Up the Years: A Cartoonist's History of India 1947-2004. This book is a collection of RK Laxman's "Common Man" cartoons, taken from a period of six decades, from 1947 to 2004.

The collection starts with portraits of Gandhi and Nehru. Then it goes through Nehru's governance, general elections, Indira Gandhi's "rule" over India and the Congress, tragedy of Janata governments, and so on. Along with each cartoon, there is a short commentary that gives a brief historic context regarding the cartoon. This was really helpful, but I felt that it should have been a bit more elaborate at times, and should have mentioned the leaders appearing in the cartoons, for readers like me who are not well informed about Indian politics.

The publisher's note says that the intention of this collection is not to "trace Laxman's development as a cartoonist over the years", but to "..showcase some of Laxman's most memorable cartoons, and place them in a historical context", so that the cartoons "..provide something like a running commentary on India's unfolding history over the six decades since independence". It is the political history of India that this selection portrays, even though there are few cartoons that relate to the social life of Indians. While going through the six decades of Indian political history in these 294 pages, we can see the game remaining more or less unchanged; It is just the players that are changing. And the common man hasn’t walked very far from 1947.

This book is neatly printed and bound in high quality paper, and looks beautiful. It is a collector's item.