The Mogul of Mirth

A genie who lit up our pages, and our lives, with pure levity-and a keen vision

- Amarnath K. Menon

OBITUARY: AJIT NINAN (1955-2023)

An eye for the quirky and the sublimely ridiculous. To be able to pluck that out from a sea of banality, and strip reality down to a kind of cosmic comedy of errors-that is the natural province of every cartoonist. And Ajit Ninan owned that territory as much as any other in his peerage. Choruses of pure, uncanned laughter from across the land attest to that fact; that he, too, ruled as one of the most illustrious ones in that dynastic roll-call. One among the Moguls of Mirth-a Jehangir of Jest, perhaps?-wearing his crown at a jaunty angle all through, and tickling us with his royal fly-whisk, for over four decades uninterrupted. There are, literally, millions of Indians whose lives were lightened by his levity. And the products that leapt out from his laboratory like runaway genies. From Detective Moochwala, that Tintinesque apparition complete with the pooch, to the political caricature woven of unalloyed delight.