The Common Man

For the 1975 French film, see The Common Man (film). For the 2011 film starring Ben Kingsley, see A Common Man (film).

When Laxman began to draw cartoons in The Times of India, he attempted to represent different states and cultures in India. In the rush to meet deadlines, he began to draw fewer and fewer background characters, until finally he found only one remaining - the now-familiar Common Man. The Common Man generally acts as a silent witness to all the action in the comic. According to anthropologist Ritu Gairola Khanduri, "Clad in a dhoti and a plaid jacket, the puzzled Common Man is no dupe: his sharp observations miss no detail of the political circus." 

The Common Man is a cartoon character created by Indian author and cartoonist R. K. Laxman. For over a half of a century, the Common Man has represented the hopes, aspirations, troubles and perhaps even foibles of the average Indian, through a daily comic strip, "You Said It" in The Times of India. The comic was started in 1951.

Other depictions

• The Common Man featured in a commemorative postage stamp released by the Indian Postal Service on the 150th anniversary of theTimes of India in 1988. It became one of the most recognised feature on The Times of India the largest-circulation English language daily broadsheet newspaper in the world.
• The Common Man was the mascot for the low budget airline Air Deccan.
• He Said It "The Common Man" Speaks...is also available in book form.
• 
  

Statues of the Common Man

• An 8 feet high  bronze statue of "The Common Man" has been erected at the Symbiosis Institute, Pune in front of its Vishwabhavan building.The Common Man has a wisp of white hair that is perpetually standing, leaving him with a bewildered look.
• A statue of the Common man, created by the sculptor Suresh Sakpal, was installed in 2007 along the sea face on Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan road, Worli seaface,Mumbai.

All About His Carrer And Begining of Rk Laxman "The Common Man"

Career

Beginning

Laxman's earliest work was for newspapers and magazines such as Swarajya and Blitz . While still at the Maharaja College of Mysore, he began to illustrate his elder brother R K Narayan's stories in The Hindu, and he drew political cartoons for the local newspapers and for the Swatantra. Laxman also drew cartoons, for the Kannada humour magazine, Koravanji. Incidentally, Koravanji was founded in 1942 by Dr M Shivaram who was an allopath and had a clinic around Majestic area in Bangalore. He started this monthly magazine, dedicating it to hilarious/satirical articles and cartoons. Dr Shivaram himself was an eminent humourist in Kannada. He encouraged Laxman quite a lot. He held a summer job at the Gemini Studios, Madras. His first full-time job was as a political cartoonist for the The Free Press Journal in Mumbai, Bal Thackeray, was his colleague. Laxman later joined The Times of India, beginning a career that has spanned for over fifty years. His "common man" character, featured in his pocket cartoons,is portrayed as a witness to the making of democracy.^[15] Anthropologist Ritu G. Khanduri notes, "R. K. Laxman structures his cartoon-news through a plot about corruption and a set of characters. This news is visualized and circulates through the recurring figures of the mantri (Minister), the Common Man and the trope of modernity symbolized by the airplane (2012: 304)."

Other creations

He also created a popular mascot for the Asian Paints group called Gattu in 1954. Laxman has also penned a few novels. His cartoons have appeared in Hindi films such asMr. & Mrs. '55 and a Tamil film Kamaraj. His creations also include the sketches drawn for the television adaptation of Malgudi Days which was written by his elder brother R K Narayan and directed by Shankar Nag. Laxman also drew caricatures of friends for private purposes.

R K Laxman Chair at Symbiosis International University

There is a chair named after R. K. Laxman at Symbiosis International University
.

Who Was The Common Man

Rasipuram Krishnaswamy Laxman (24 October 1921 - 26 January 2015) was an Indian cartoonist, illustrator, and humorist.He is best known for his creation The Common Man, for his daily cartoon strip, "You Said It" in The Times of India, which started in 1951. Laxman was hospitalised with life threatening condition battling which the world-renowned cartoonist died. On Sunday, his condition worsened after which he was put on life support

R. K. Laxman was born in Mysore. His father was a headmaster and Laxman was the youngest of six sons an older brother is the famous novelist R. K. Narayan.

Laxman was engrossed by the illustrations in magazines such as The Strand Magazine, Punch, Bystander, Wide World and Tit-Bits, even before he could read. 

Soon he was drawing on his own, on the floors, walls and doors of his house and doodling caricatures of his teachers at school; praised by a teacher for his drawing of a peepal leaf, he began to think of himself as an artist in the making. Another early influence on Laxman were the cartoons of the world-renowned British cartoonist, 

Sir David Low (whose signature he misread as "cow" for a long time) that appeared now and then in The Hindu. Laxman notes in his autobiography, The Tunnel of Time:

“

I drew objects that caught my eye outside the window of my room – the dry twigs, leaves and lizard-like creatures crawling about, the servant chopping firewood and, of course, and number of crows in various postures on the rooftops of the buildings opposite

”

Laxman was the captain of his local "Rough and Tough and Jolly" cricket team and his antics inspired the stories "Dodu the money maker" and "The Regal Cricket Club" written by his brother, Narayan. Laxman's idyllic childhood was shaken for a while when his father suffered a paralytic stroke and died around a year later, but the elders at home bore most of the increased responsibility, while Laxman continued with his schooling.

After high school, Laxman applied to the J. J. School of Art, Bombay hoping to concentrate on his lifelong interests of drawing and painting, but the dean of the school wrote to him that his drawings lacked, "the kind of talent to qualify for enrollment in our institution as a student", and refused admission.^[13] He finally graduated with a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Mysore. 

In the meantime he continued his freelance artistic activities and contributed cartoons to Swarajya and an animated film based on the mythological character, Narada.