His memory failing after the last in a series of paralytic strokes that crippled him, B.G. Varma can’t exactly recollect which year he joined the famed Shankar’s Weekly as a cartoonist-caricaturist.
“It was in 1971 or 72,” he says.
But he has vivid memories of his mentor — the firm taskmaster, cartoonist Shankar. He’s also particular about the upkeep of the numerous works — cartoons, cover designs, paintings, illustrations and comic strips — created by him.
“He doesn’t want to sell any of his works,” says his spouse Gayathri Varma, sitting in the couple’s medium-size first floor apartment in Tripunithura.
After their return from Delhi in 2002, they had been staying at Sreekala Palace, their home-cum-gallery, a kilometre away until the latest bout of stroke in 2012 made him almost immobile for sometime. “It’s encouraging that he’s begun to do sketches again,” says Mrs. Varma.
On Sunday, the cartoonist will be honoured by the Kerala Cartoon Academy and Ernakulam Press Club at a function. A two-day exhibition of his political cartoons will also be held at the art gallery at Press Club.
Brought up in Karachi where his father worked as an engineer, Mr. Varma secured a job at the ST Reddiar Press in Ernakulam after studying art in Mavelikkara and Hyderabad. A cartoon strip he did for ‘Manorama’ earned him the job at Shankar’s Weekly .
The strictness of Shankar was not to his liking initially, but eventually, he was moulded by his mentor into a fine cartoonist.
From political cartooning, he went on to be the choicest caricaturist drawing ‘The Man of The Week’ caricature for the Weekly . “He would have drawn almost all celebs and important political personalities of that time for the column,” says Mrs. Varma.
After the closure of the Weekly , he worked for the Children’s Book Trust (CBT) and juggled jobs in between, even working overseas for a publication.
Mr. Varma has also designed commemorative stamps for the Central government, on blood donation and on the 1976-Montreal Olympics.
In Malayalam, he designed cover for the now defunct Yathra magazine brought out by V.T. Nandakumar.
