Ajit Ninan 1955-2023: His clean lines dealt with a messy world

Ajit Ninan's genius lay in his caricatures. Both of public personalities as well as of situations our collective foot found itself stepping in. His deft, clean lines were a supreme contrast to the complex, messy theatre of the absurd he dealt with. But before we fell in chuckled love with Ninan's political plunge-liners, it was his Inspector Clouseauesque Detective Moochwala and his (poonch-less) dog Pooch that got us hooked.

Ninan was inspired by the cartoon art and craft of Mario Miranda and New Yorker's James Thurber and Arnold Roth. In an atmosphere where the rapier wit and thrust of the political cartoon has grown into a farming rake, Ninan turned his mind and ink to 'safer' terrain, his 'Gita Twenty20' cartoon (below) being a classic rip-roarious one. Ninan was one of this generation's great humour artists and sutradhaars. His lines will be missed.