| Robert Frost |
Posted
on 30-Mar-04 08:40 AM
One fine day in his 5th Grade Class, the teacher was late. Bored, Rajesh out of no reason at all, decided to go infront of the class and lampoon his teacher who had a pot belly and a grotesque style of teaching. He started caricaturing his teacher, and it was highly successful and everyone in class started enjoying. So, whenever the teacher was late, Rajesh started going in front of the class and parodied his teacher again and again.
Then one day, while he was peforming his parody, the teacher suddenly entered the class. The teacher had been interestingly observing his works, and although he was a little disappointed, he gave Rajesh an incentive to work on his art, not towards satiring teachers, but towards those he feels does harm to him and to his loved ones. The message from the teacher was taken seriously and from then on, he was fascinated towards drawing cartoons. It ultimately became his passion and he started doing it daily. He drew cartoons of whoever he felt he had to teach lessons.
As it is the case, he had to fight to land his first job. He went up to various publications with the idea of doing cartoons, but none of them thought that his work could be appreciated. He kept roaming door to door though until he went to Kantipur in 90-91. Kantipur thought it was a great idea, and Rajesh started drawing cartoons in both Kantipur and Kathmandu post, the former being "Gajab cha ba" which became a daily dose of bashing untrustful poticians, curropt bureaucrats, dishonest businessman and pervert citizens. He got immense response from his readers which helped him to create more cartoons. When the silent Kathmandu Valley was thinking aloud of their curropt society in the midst of the azeleas of darkness, Rajesh captivated the moment with his highly effective weapons, a pen, a pencil and his brain. In the next morning's paper, before anybody could hardly open their eyes, Rajesh had already drawn first blood.
Then he decided to go to United States for his further education in the area of arts, but he had slight mistake with his passport and he had to return back home. Where one pretty girl, with a boufant hair, and dark blue eyes, had seemingly eyed on Rajesh's works for a long time now and was willing to meet this nice gentleman. This lady had fallen in love with the art of Rajesh and when she got to meet him, she was deeply impressed by his exceptional persona as well. The two got engaged in a deep affair which tied them together for the rest of their lives.
Long since he started doing cartoons in Kantipur, I have been a great fan of Mr. Rajesh KC who hails from Lainchour, Kathmandu. Due to his work towards the society, he was awarded the best cartoonist of the year 1998 and second prize for his work in a contest held by the United Nations Childrens Development where he had drawn a beautiful picture of a sister, keeping her small brother in her tiny lap and teaching him to read the lines of the book she was holding in her hands.
One of my favorite work of Rajesh was the cartoon he drew which portrays the said socio-cultural reality very well. It shows a female doctor doing a pregnant women’s sonogram, in a bid to determine the gender of the foetus (instead of determining the shape and position of the baby inside the womb to provide appropriate medicare to the would-be mother, which is perhaps why the machine was invented). Behind the doctor, anxiously waiting for the result, is the mother-in-law of the pregnant woman. “Relax Maa! Doctor says it’s a boy”, merrily says the husband, apparently a modern man, who was standing, with a revolver secretly held in his hand, on the other side of the bed. The piece is self-explanatory: The man was ready to commit infanticide, had it been a girl. Such is his tiny masterpieces that he delivers great knowledge, through his small cartoons.
One day, Rajesh was strolling across the heavy traffic in the Kathmandu Valley returning home from his work, he went to buy a book from a book store. There lied a man sitting on the stool next to him and reading the newspapers. All of a sudden he started laughing and Rajesh was quite surprised. Being curious, he decided to ask the man what the reason was. The man replied, by showing a small cartoon drawn by Rajesh at the bottom left corner of the Kantipur Daily Newspaper, "I would like to meet this guy someday". "You already haved" replied Rajesh.
In his cartoons lies a man watching the abuses, mistreatment, improper handling, illuse, and molesting the innocence and the societal abuses, with sometimes bemused, sometimes bewildered, sometimes confused and sometimes engrossed in a deep thought, which he names as his "Uncommon Man".
Rajesh KC recently got honored for his contribution to the society by a function organized by Osho Tapoban Family and he was awarded the felicitation by his great fan Swami Arun Ananda. Ratna Pustak Bhandar has recently published the cartoons by Rajesh naming it as "The Cartoon Collection by Rajesh, Part I", which can be found at Kantipuronline.com.
For more on KC:
http://www.kantipuronline.com/cartoonbook/index.html
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