While the city basks in the afterglow of hosting its first Comic Con last weekend, a city comics fan has paid tribute to a 99-year-old Marathi cartoonist who has achieved a unique feat.
The Pune-based Shivram Dattatreya Phadnis, who is considered a living legend in Maharashtra, has been producing the Diwali edition cover of the Marathi literary magazine Mohini continuously for 73 years, since 1952. Behala boy Agniva Chakraborty has launched a calendar paying tribute to the artist who is five months away from completing his birth centenary.
“Phadnis’s speciality is captionless cartoons. He is a contemporary of R.K. Laxman and Bal Thackeray but he has never ventured into political cartoons. All his awards are for cartoons that radiate innocence and joy. They never bite; rather they tickle your funny bone,” says Agniva, who travelled to Pune in December to meet the nonagenarian.
Captionless cartoons on 'Mohini' covers through the years on a page of the calendar
The software engineer has been producing calendars since 2021 and has earlier paid tribute to Narayan Debnath, Satyajit Ray (through his film title calligraphy), Rappa Roy (the quirky hero in Sujog Bandyopadhyay’s comics) and Debashis Deb.
Phadnis changed the trend of magazine covers with his illustration on the cover of Mohini in October 1952.
“Till then, the practice was using pictures of famous faces. But his illustration of a boy and a girl standing at a bus stop on the Mohini cover created a stir. The print on her sari is of numerous cats while that on his shirt is of mice. They are aligned to look as if one lot is chasing the other,” said Agniva, pointing to a page.
The calendar showcases Phadnis’s work for other magazines too, like Huns, Anand, Buwa, Lokmat etc. A Tarun Bharat cover, which has a baby offering its toffee and toy in a bid to silence a woman singing with a tanpura in hand, had been exhibited in a Frankfurt show in 2006. Another Mohini cover, exhibited in Montreal, has a king of hearts card cut through the middle as if in a duel between the two halves. The victorious king on top is offering flowers to a queen of hearts card.
Phadnis illustrated books too, striking a partnership with Marathi humourist D.M. Mirasdar.
The Sir JJ School of Art graduate has illustrated advertisements and public social campaigns too in his signature style.
“It is remarkable that he is still active at this age. He wants to celebrate his centenary by doing the cover illustration this year too,” Agniva said.
