My Writing Career and Mrs. Indira Gandhi

During the last 20 years, I have published several technical books in India. One person who really deserves a credit for my writing career is Mrs. Indira Gandhi, India’s Prime Minister. I never met her, though I did see her from distance during two public functions. I never liked her policies, and her policies indirectly pushed me into the writing career. In fact, it happened in steps – I started with drawing cartoons and then progressed to writing technical articles, and finally to books.


The story started in June 1975 when President of India, Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed, declared a state of emergency upon advice by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. I was in high school at that time. We used to get the Indian Express, an anti Congress newspaper in our home. Because of its anti Congress and anti emergency writings, the publication of Indian Express was suspended during the emergency period. Since Indian Express was not available, my father switched to the Times of India newspaper.


One feature that was distinctly different in Times of India from Indian Express was the daily cartoon by R K Laxman. Though Indian Express also had a staff cartoonist Abu Abraham, his cartoons were more political in nature, where as Laxman’s cartoon were more geared toward common people’s life. I started liking Laxman’s cartoon, and soon developed an urge to draw cartoons.


In July 1976, after passing the school, I joined Pusa Polytechnic in the Electronics Engineering Diploma course. Though the Polytechnic was open to girls, in those days, they used to stay away from engineering courses. However, in Aug 1976, two girls joined our class. Both girls were the daughters of the staff working in Pusa Polytechnic. Because they were girls and daughters of the senior staff of the Polytechnic, they were given special treatment by lecturers as well as students. I noticed significant changes taking place in the class, which triggered my desire to express my views through cartoons. First I started drawing quick cartoons on my desk or the class blackboard during the gap between periods, and later moved to draw cartoons on paper and put those on the college notice board.

As you know, each cartoon has two components – the message and the characters. I used to get average marks in my drawing class in my school, so I had to struggle with drawing characters in my cartoons. For example, if I drew a dog in my cartoon, it looked like an animal from another planet. In fact, because of my poor drawing, once I was expelled from the Electrical Engineering class because the dog that I drew in my cartoon looked like buffalo. (I learnt later that students used to call that over-weight lecturer buffalo!) To improve my drawing skills, I bought a few cartoon books by R K Laxman and Sudhir Dhar, which used to give me idea about drawing characters in different moods. Slowly, my drawing capabilities improved and I got courage to approach newspapers and magazines with a request to have a look at my cartoons.



In 1978, I met Abu Abraham, Indian Express’ staff cartoonist in his office in New Delhi. I showed him a couple of cartoons. He gave me a few suggestions and kept a few cartoons for possible use in the newspaper. The newspaper editor found one of my cartoons on adult education suitable to go with an article on the adult education. So, that was my first cartoon published in the Sunday edition of a national newspaper. I was paid an honorarium of Rs. 50 (about 6 US$ at that time) for my cartoon, the highest so far all my published cartoons so far. Here is my first published cartoon.



After my first cartoon was published, a few more were published in Sarita and Women’s Era magazines.

This post is getting too long. I will write about the story of my articles and books some other day. I end this post by thanking Mrs. Indira Gandhi for pushing me into the wonderful world of writing.