“If journalism is supposed to be the first draft of history, then cartoons are surely its first laugh.” Popular cartoonist Hemant Morparia backs up his words with a series of 64 artworks which include 59 cartoons and five sculptures for his latest show delightfully titled, Motabhai is watching you, currently showing at Sakshi Salon. For those familiar with Morparia’s politically flavoured work, it won’t be too difficult to guess what the larger theme of this show is, and who might Motabhai be. For those still guessing, a walk through the show will leave no trace of doubt. On one hand, Morparia takes a dig at the ruling government’s policies and actions, with all his wit and sarcasm, which together concoct thoughtful humour. On the other, he brings to light social evils that we, as modern and so called progressive Indians, are often silent spectators to, if not perpetrators of. From cow-vigilante oppression and enforced patriotism to anti-Romeo squads and blatant racism, his tiny frames, with their delicate sketch pen strokes, actually encompass a much broader canvas.
Morparia is way less scathing in person than he comes across in his artwork. “Cartoons are what keeps society together,” he states, swivelling lightly in his chair at the clinic, where he’s just wrapped up his day’s work as a radiologist. The formality of an office space adds a dash of serious conviction to his words, even as he elaborates how cartoons should be treated like a family joke, where members occasionally poke fun at each other. The duality of profession in his case, does not apply to the same in personality though. “What I do as a cartoonist is no different than what I do as a person,” he explains, leaving little room for ambiguity. You might chuckle, you might sigh or nod your head in approval, but you cannot help being dragged into a time where there were no memes or Whatsapp forwards. Cartoons for years have been those little snippets of humour, irony and wit that the eye came across or sought along the frayed edges newspapers.
Before social media
Motabhai is watching you takes you back to more rudimentary times, before the advent of technology, where content won over “crappy wisdom”, something that permeates today’s media, especially social media platforms. It’s not just in the tangible “smudges and warts” left by the handiwork of the artist that makes the work more tangible but also in the visible identity of the maker. We live in an age, explains Morparia, where “…technology is being used as a megaphone, not as a debating platform.” Social media platforms often become a space where unknown users from within invisible, isolated, unseen sources attack and abuse with no accountability whatsoever. Morparia though relies on the power of not just great content but of the visual itself. A person exposed to a visual for five seconds might remember it for 15 years. A lot of his work in this show itself, is that old and yet, still remains relevant.
A cartoon is like a midway mirror, reflecting what the society reflects onto the artist’s mind before he puts it into form to be reflected back on by the society. For Morparia, the endgame is crystal clear, “I want it to reflect me”, he asserts, taking full responsibility for the work that he puts out for public consumption. He acknowledges cartoon-making to be “one of the most organic things [to] happen”, because it is at the end of the day an “articulation of opinion”, as he puts it. This personal opinion comes from an informed, well read and aware mind that is soaking in and responding to events. Describing the mysterious process of how one arrives at the final product as a “complicated mix” deduced from varied influences, Morparia says he relies on “empirical thinking”. A fine example would be his cartoon of a parent carrying a child in pouring rain where the child, clearly overly secured under the double protection of a rain-coat and an umbrella, flouts all efforts by the parent, by stretching its hand out to catching a falling raindrop. Culled from his own life as a witness to the ironies of human nature, this sensitive cartoon that requires no text, is a clear break from the overtly political ones.
Distilling complexities
So are Morparia’s sculptures, where he returns to politics again, only this time straddling both national and international turf. With ‘Whobama?’, he explores the many masks that Barack Obama as President of USA wore and with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s monogrammed suit sculpture, the cartoon placed right behind it gives it its much required context. He tries to steer clear of making his cartoons esoteric, but sometimes certain communities – religious or professional, end up identifying with specific cartoons at a deeper level. In these cases too, the artist is being true to his real self and not pandering to generic tastes. As a Gujarati and as a medical professional, some of Morparia’s cartoons in the past have been bigger hits with his own community and the Parsis owing to the understanding of the language. The same applies to doctors owing to their understanding of the field. But there’s something for everyone in this show, and why shouldn’t there be? After all Motabhai is watching us all indeed.
Motabhai is watching you is ongoing at the Sakshi Salon, Colaba until September 9