A small gallery restricts the size of displays. But sacrificing the dazzle of imposing scales could lead to density, to concentrated brevity. And brevity lent the Society for Contemporary Artists’ recent offering, Monsoon, at its own little space on the Kasba connector a welcome freshness.

Ganesh Haloi again stole the show with his visual haikus (picture). Just a weave of tremulous earth-brown lines strewn this way and that, and squiggles that are like some undeciphered script; or spare sketches of trees and whimsical tatters of green: that’s all he needed to summon a meditative yet playful lyricism. Manu Parekh and Dipak Banerjee are two other seniors who haven’t staled with habit as have their contemporaries, Sanat Kar and Suhas Roy. This time, however, the latter’s Jesus came as a timely redeemer of his reputation. And the gaunt lines of Sunil Das, racing across bits of torn newspaper, gave his heads the edgy colloquialism of graffiti.

Partha Dasgupta’s rugged, austere terrain counterpointed Pradip Maitra’s simple watercolours, while Aditya Basak’s multi-limbed, ravenous spiders — recalling Louise Bourgeois, of course — emerged as a provocative metaphor for menace. Manoj Dutta’s dainty, folk art stylization, Srikanta Paul’s ironic take on Pieta, and Rajen Mondal’s tongue-in-cheek woodcuts are some of the other works that ought to be cited.

When the going gets too grim or too gross or both, smirks are your best revenge. Time was when newspapers served you your daily smile but that’s not so anymore. Does that mean cartoonists are an endangered species? If so, the recent show at Maya Art Space celebrating Bangla Cartoon was a timely reminder of a tradition that goes back at least 140-plus years. Because the earliest example was from Amrita Bazar Patrika, 1872, when it was probably still a bi-lingual weekly.

Of course, the influence came from the British masters and publications such as Punch which obviously set the norm in terms of drawing styles, subject matter and satire (though the debunking humour of jesters in Indian courts is a fond popular myth). In fact, a periodical, Harbola Bhnar, with a fascinating (probably) woodcut print cover even calls itself the Indian Punch.

Politics, economic burdens, social mores — particularly the growing independence of women which creased male Anglo-American brows as well, especially during the suffragette movement — and, in recent years, environmental degradation, were the commonest themes. If Abanindranath Tagore’s irreverent stage Shiva followed his art principles, Gaganendranath’s drawing revealed his debt to English cartoons. And though Somnath Hore and Chittaprasad were in no mood for flippancy in 1945, wit was the winning flavour of the show. Whether in the caricatures of Kutty, the panels of Sukumar Ray, or the sharp cartoons of professionals who signed as Kafi Khan, Piciel, Rebotibhusan, Sufi, Chandi, Amal...