Of cartoons and clowns

Aseem Trivedi is young, brash and angry.

His artwork is direct and confrontationist and no less obnoxious than a poster with the Ashoka lions, each morphed with heads of national politicos - that is currently going viral on Facebook.

He is young, he has a point of view, and like angry young people his age, he is vocal and strident about it and may not just listen to another point of view.

So here is the young man with ideas and a pen, who has given expression to his thoughts. Not many people actually saw his drawings, let alone knew he existed even a few days ago.

Today, thanks to the sedition charge, he has been catapulted to the national political arena, and is telling every television channel who want his bytes, his thoughts on ‘freedom of expression’.

Life could not get more comical or more surreal.

Before talent can hone or talent can mature, here is this young man who is convinced his ‘cartoons’ are bang on target.

Perhaps they are, for no middle-class Indian who views them would turn away – they reflect the anger perfectly. Very typically, every angry Indian is hoping to find someone who would stick as the poster boy of an ‘anti corruption’ movement, someone who would put themselves forward to reflect their collective ire. So far though, no poster boy has sustained the course.

Marie Antoinette may never have historically said, “...let them eat cake.” But this government is saying it, again and again, bumbling into ludicrous ‘cartoon’ situations.

How else will a young man with views that many young people in this country may have, find platforms to vent one after another? – it’s only thanks to a sedition charge; and thanks to the hunger for drama rather than news that drives television today.

I have spent today, my 9pm daily dose of the ‘news’, channel hopping, hoping to find an Aseem-free channel. He makes for great television, even out-shouting Arnab at the mike. Forcing a galled Morparia to mutter, “If he continues to draw this way, two years down the line no one will look at his cartoons.”

It is a sign of the times that in a time when a bill advocates promotion on the basis of reservation and not merit, that it does not take talent to take centre stage.

The political class has first to clear its court of jesters and find its misplaced statesman or two. They have entertained the country long enough.