By A.J. Philip /
I lost one of my best friends in the death of cartoonist Sudhir Tailang. He has not been keeping good health for some time but I did not know that the end was so near. The last time I met him was at the India Habitat Centre where he organised an exhibition of his cartoons. He came straight from the hospital bed, received every guest with wife Vibha and daughter Aditi beside him.
The guests included LK Advani, Sitaram Yechury, Sumitra Mahajan and HK Dua.
Nobody could make out that he was seriously ill. He spoke so well that many a time the people could not contain their laughter. I felt so proud of my friend and his dedication to cartooning.
I first met him when he joined the Hindustan Times after a short stint in the Navbharat Times. He filled the vacancy caused by the resignation of Sudhir Dhar.
We became good friends. Every day he would draw a few draft cartoons and show them to me before showing them to Editor HK Dua.
Since he came from Hindi journalism, he was not very confident about his English. Actually, he had a good command of the language.
He would like me to go through his captions. He would also discuss political and other issues, to nuance his cartoon ideas. He never borrowed an idea from me, though he would let me have a say on his cartoons before they were printed.
He trusted my political judgement so much that even after I left the HT he would contact me and discuss with me his cartoon ideas. He, perhaps, gave more importance to the fact that I hailed from Kayamkulam, the birthplace of Shankar, the father of Indian cartooning.
He was a very hardworking person. Unlike many other cartoonists, he used a drawing board and brush to do his cartoons.
When HT sent me to Beijing on an assignment, he wanted me to buy some Chinese brushes for him.
I had some difficulty in buying the brushes but I managed to get them. His tastes were expensive. He used only a particular German drawing paper for his cartoons. The ink also came from Germany.
Those days the Hindustan Times used to organise an annual cartoon competition. He would get over a thousand cartoons from all over India. He had a tough time shortlisting them.
He was a very good friend of Abu Abraham, who was a permanent judge of the cartoons. Another would be a celebrity. Tailang enjoyed organising the contest.
He was a family man, who took care of his parents and siblings, one of whom passed out from the National School of Drama.
He was from Bikaner in Rajasthan. He could give a lecture on why Bikaner became the namkeen capital of India. “The water in Bikaner makes the mixtures and other snacks tastier”.
One day when I visited him, he was talking on phone to someone in Hindi. “You can speak to my friend in Malayalam”, Tailang said and handed me the phone. It was Rishiraj Singh, a senior police officer of Kerala cadre, who is from Rajasthan, who was on the other end of the phone.
Many people did not know that Tailang was originally from Andhra Pradesh and they migrated to Rajasthan and settled down there.
When I quit the HT, he drew my cartoon, got it signed by all my colleagues and gifted it to me. Once on a visit to my house, he noticed that my caricature was placed in the bedroom.
He drew a caricature of my wife with the caption “The Boss” which is now placed beside my caricature. On another visit, which was on my younger son Snehesh’s birthday, he drew an instant cartoon of my son which is still preserved.
He produced a serial on cartoons for Doordarshan. He took Abu Abraham to Kovalam beach to shoot him. I wanted him to visit Kayamkulam also but that did not happen.
Tailang had a good business sense. He produced several books and organised several exhibitions. He used to be invited for discussions on TV and he would always make interesting points.
He enjoyed being with HT. He was not the same after he had to leave HT in unhappy circumstances. Afterwards, he started drawing for the Asian Age.
It is my fault that I have not been in touch with him for the last few years. But he always remained one of my best friends, whom I could call up and discuss a personal or professional problem. Rest in Peace, my friend!
A J Philip is a senior journalist