Ajit Ninan: His lines never die; neither will our laughter

Every day, we editors at The Times of India would get a mail from ‘theajitninan@gmail.com’. The last mail from Ajit Ninan, the legendary cartoonist who made generations laugh, cry and think, came on Wednesday with an attached cartoon and the subject line, ‘from hospital … two more days on leave, please’. Ninan died the next night. He was 68.

Ninan was stubborn till his end that he shouldn’t miss his daily cartoon ‘Just like that’. Nor should editors miss publishing it. When we did, we regretted it. Scanning each of the 50-plus editions of TOI, Ninan would know which one missed carrying his baby. And when the resident editor got a call or a mail from him, there would be no defence, only an apology. Ninan was equally prompt in appreciating good work. “Love you,” was his favourite line. It didn’t matter that you were not too young, Ninan in a good mood always called you son (‘mone’ or ‘mole’ if you were a Malayalee). And it came from his heart.

I, like millions of others, have been fascinated by Ninan’s creations, be it his comic hero Moochwalah or his illustrations and cartoons, first in India Today (where I worked for five years) and later The Times of India (where I got to know him personally). It was, however, only in 2017 that I got close to Ninan, thanks to an editors’ conference TOI organised in St Petersburg and Moscow. On our outings, I, with gleeful admiration, tagged along Ninan, trying to chat and get a glimpse of his visual mind. I was thrilled when he, after a drink late in the evening, asked me out for a stroll. We walked the Moscow streets in the wee hours, and I couldn’t believe that I was talking, hugging, laughing with Ajit Ninan!

In the morning, by the time I dragged myself into the conference room after barely a few hours of sleep, Ninan was in the room, in an impeccable coat, making caricatures of people around. Participants at the conference were given five minutes to make presentations, and Ninan caricatured most of them before they finished their talk. When I walked back after my presentation, Ninan handed over my caricature. Knowing his uncanny ability to turn people into animals and objects in three frames or less (something TOI, in a tribute, headlined ‘Houdini humour’) I took the sheet of paper from him with a sense of trepidation. Would he have drawn me as a frog, a mongoose, a jackal? Flattered I was, for it was just me! He had signed it, with the line: Best wishes from TOI family.

Later, we would exchange cartoons from across the world. “Brilliant,” Ninan would exclaim when he spotted a sharp one. The bonding in Russia helped me get Ninan to do illustrations for the Tamil Nadu editions of TOI on big news days such as the state Budget. But he, as many creative geniuses are, was temperamental. When I called him to request for an illustration for the 2018-19 Tamil Nadu Budget, Ninan was curt. “I am too busy,” he said, and ended the call.

Barely five minutes later, while I was driving to work, my phone rang. It was Ninan asking, “What’s the big idea for this Budget, mone?” I said I can’t think of anything specific, but there would be doles from finance minister O Pannerselvam who had bought peace with chief minister Edappadi K Palaniswami. Before I reached the office, the illustration was in my inbox. It showed EPS and OPS on a bike descending on Marina beach with a parachute which bore the names of different sectors; OPS had a goody bag slung over his shoulder. There was less time for an illustration when finance minister Palanivel Thiaga Rajan was to present the revised Budget for 2021-22. All I told Ninan was that it would be a difficult task for the finance minister to keep the DMK’s poll promises. And he drew PTR, as Jesus Christ, pulling on his back the ‘?’ symbol on which a farmer, a businessman and a graduate were trying to climb. I was flattered when Ninan messaged the next day that he loved the headline: PTR bears the cross to lead Tamils to the promised land. Goodbye, Ninan. Go, make everyone in the other world laugh.

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