It’s not easy being a bureaucrat and cartoonist at the same time, especially with the restrictions of the all-pervasive conduct rules which bind civil servants from expressing their opinion without prior permission
On the front page of former bureaucrat B.P. Acharya’s book of cartoons is a sketch of the two masters who inspired him — R.K. Laxman and Sankaran Kutty Nair — perched in the clouds with pen and brush poised looking wistfully earthwards with the legend: “Wish we were there!” What indeed would they have made of these funny times!
As a boy, Acharya writes in his introduction, he used to painstakingly copy their works from newspapers and magazines like the Illustrated Weekly of India, making hundreds of copies which his artist mother has still fondly preserved. It helped him to learn how to do a recognisable caricature of almost anyone in a few deft strokes of his pen. The passion grew through his teen years until he was a young graduate in Jawaharlal Nehru University where his cartooning skills were deployed in posters during the student union elections. And instead of dying a natural death once he joined the Indian Administrative Services, his cartooning career gained a fresh lease of life, especially at the National Academy where fresh batches of administrators were straitjacketed into the strictest code of conduct and even stricter dressing code, struggling not only to understand the ins and outs of the government’s workings but also the mysteries of wielding fork and spoon at formal dining.
Among Acharya’s first cartoons as a trainee at the National Academy of Administration at Mussoorie was one on the director’s ruling that probationers had to wear neckties at all times, including while attending classes. There were muted protests of course but no one dared to disobey the orders. Young Acharya’s response was to sketch a caricature of Lal Bahadur Shastri (after whom the Academy in Mussoorie was named) being barred entry into its hallowed portals for not wearing a tie with his dhoti-kurta. The cartoon went up on the wall journal that the trainees ran on the wall opposite the dining hall at the Academy which was at a vantage point and noticed by all. Forty years later, Acharya who retired as special chief secretary in Telangana, presented a framed copy of the cartoon to the Academy for display at the hallowed Administrator’s Walk, where memorabilia of each IAS batch is displayed.
It’s not easy being a bureaucrat and cartoonist at the same time, especially with the restrictions of the all-pervasive conduct rules which bind civil servants from expressing their opinion without prior permission. But, as he writes in his introduction, he “bashed on regardless”. Since those early days, Acharya has churned out hundreds of cartoons not just for the IAS house journal but also for journals and newspapers like Money Life and the Pioneer. And, as is his wont, he is still bashing on to the delight of his friends and readers.
Obtuse Angle: A Bureaucrat’s Journey through Cartoons
By B.P. Acharya
Visual Quest Books
pp. 288; Rs 399
