Kerala Cartoon Academy presents an online exhibition of cartoons of Sajjive Balakrishnan. The exhibition can be accessed on the Cartoon Academy's website www.keralacartoonacademy.com. The cartoons, 30 of them, have been taken from the cartoonist's Malayalam blog www.ooneswarampo.blogspot.com. Sajjive calls his blog that because of his love for the ‘sadya', he says.
The cartoonist, who calls himself a ‘fatoonist', claims to be India's ‘heaviest'. The cartoons broadly fall under the categories that are of perennial interest to the Malayali – ‘Vidyarambham', ‘Office' (the government office), ‘Goondolsavam' (self explanatory), ‘Shapaad' (food) and ‘Avial' cartoons (a mish-mash of themes). Sajjive pokes fun without really offending Malayali sentiments. These, by the way, are not too heavy in terms of the political content, therefore, funnier because of their general nature.
There are several which will have you in splits. It falls under the category of office cartoons.
One cartoon shows a well-endowed woman walking into an office in typical Kerala attire, only that the woman does not have the ‘neriyathu'. But her colleague's wry question that dressing in typically Malayali attire for Kerala Piravi is one thing but is it necessary to ‘that' extent is outright funny and thought-provoking. Just think about the lengths folks go on that one day to assert or prove their ‘Malayali-ness'. There are several other similar ones, some not so thought-provoking but simply mirth-inducing. There is the one under ‘Goondolsavam' where a goonda tells a palmist that the odd line on his palm which the palmist can't identify is in fact a scar! The exhibition concludes on June 15.
