Page 253 - Art and Crafts of Bangladesh

250 ART AND CRAFTS

on seeing these cartoons. These cartoons generally do not excite
anybody. ...but are enjoyable. The main character of cartoons here
is that these are for mere enjoyment.’ [Trans.]
3
A cartoonist named Vincent Purification started to do collage
cartoons in the eighties. In the eighties Unmad- the cartoon
magazine made its appearance. The founder editors were
Ishtiaque Hossain and Kazi Khalid Ashraf (fig. 5.12). Unmad was
the first cartoon magazine of our country. Inspired by Mad this
magazine wants to look at personal, social, public, and private and
all other aspects of human life from a purely funny angle. The
angle is obviously oblique and there lies the fun. Even the tragic
facts of life become humorous through the way it is seen and
drawn on Unmad. Unmad gained exceptional popularity and as its
natural consequence a number of cartoon magazines were
published. However, of these only Unmad survived and became
permanent. After twenty-nine years it is still published regularly
on a monthly basis. Unmad has organized cartoon exhibitions. The current editor of
Unmad (unmadok in the language of the magazine) Ahsan Habib is a powerful
cartoonist. In Unmad some people plan the satire stories; some do the drawings while
others do the collages. This means that Unmad is a joint venture. Obviously, the
identities of individual cartoonists are not prominent here. However, among the ones
who had nonetheless achieved popularity through doing cartoons in Unmad Syed
Iqbal, Rezaun Nabi and Sultanul Islam are the most prominent.
In 1978, artist Rafiqunnabi (Ranabi) created his cartoon character ‘Tokai’(fig.5.13) on
the pages of the weekly Bichitra. Ranabi said that he had thought of a character like
this since the sixties. He thought of it when he became familiar with the character
‘Charlie Brown’ of the famous American cartoonist Schulz, who would make witty
comments, speak out unpleasant truths or make an oblique, unconventional
observation. Tokai is not exactly Charlie Brown- he is a poor, uncared for child of the
city streets. Ranabi had the opportunity of mixing with these children and observing
them closely since the time of Dhaka’s gradual growth into a city. He has felt that their
natural smartness and many of their surprisingly original observations about life make
such a character credible. His thoughts proved right very quickly. Tokai became
hugely popular and Ranabi has been making him comment about the imbalances of

fig. 5.12 (top) Cover,
Unmad

fig. 5.13 (bottom)
Rafiqun Nabi, Tokai,
1984