Mr. Laxman, battling a severe urinary tract infection and kidney failure, was put back on ventilator support on Sunday evening. His health had deteriorated after a series of strokes in 2004 and 2010, which severely impeded his speech and left him bedridden.
“Unfortunately, his condition started rapidly deteriorating in the last 24 hours and he failed to respond to the therapies to improve his multi-organ dysfunction,” said Sameer Jog, doctor who had been treating Mr. Laxman in the hospital since January 17. Mr. Laxman, under close observation in the hospital, was taken off the ventilator last week after his health improved a little.
“The last few days have been unnerving for us,” said Mr. Laxman’s son, journalist Srinivas Laxman. Mr. Laxman’s wife, 89-year-old Kamala Laxman, had “borne the news stoically,” he said. Tributes flowed in soon after the news of the death spread. “India will miss you R.K. Laxman. We are grateful to you for adding the much-needed humour in our lives and always bringing smiles on our faces,” Prime Minister Narendra Modi tweeted. “We have lost a truly uncommon cartoonist who gave a new dimension to caricaturing in India,” Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis said.
Mr. Laxman, born in the then Mysore on October 24, 1921, was the youngest of six sons of a school headmaster and became famous as his brother, writer R.K. Narayan. Growing up in the city’s idyllic environs, Mr. Laxman was influenced by the caricatures of the New Zealand-born Sir David Low, then the pre-eminent caricaturist of the Western world.
Sir David’s acerbic caricatures of the momentous events of the early 20th century, especially of the great reactionaries, fascists and authoritarians who shaped Europe and the world’s destiny, made a lasting impression on the young Laxman. Famously denied admission to the J.J. School of Art, Bombay, after his drawings “failed” to meet the standards, Mr. Laxman went on to caricature the passion and folly of India’s human comedy.
Source - The Hindu
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