Caricaturing faces on streets for survival

CHENNAI: Under the blazing heat of the late afternoon sun, M Siva Prakash, begins his bus journey, from his home in Sembakkam, to the Tambaram junction. He will be seen humped with his bulky easel stand, drawing sheets, and a set of Crayola markers.

The 22-year-old self-taught caricaturist, then boards the local train to the Nungambakkam railway station, and then onto a share auto, that takes him to the swarming paradise of food, fun and games of the Kora Food Street.

“It takes me three hours to reach the food street from my home. After setting up my little space amongst the crowd by 8 pm, I sit tight, waiting for passers by to allow me to caricature them,” says Siva, who stays overnight on some days, leaving for home at 5 in the morning.

There were nights where he would stay up, deprived of sleep, only to find himself enveloped inside a dark room, staring at his paintings all over the wall. This was the wall of sanguine for Siva. He never had his mothers approval to take up caricaturing as a profession.

“I remember my mother woke me up one night, looking at my bedroom walls. She asked me to bow down to the people at the nearby playpark, and request them if I could caricature them,” he narrates.

Siva went through an arduous childhood. His father was a sign board artist, who had forsaken the family, due to his drug addiction. He grew up seeing his mother walking barefoot, carrying fruits and fish on her head, from town to town. “Unlike my father, she never abandoned my brother and I. Although we both were notable for painting right from our youth, my mother dreaded that we would end up walking down our fathers footsteps,” says the caricaturist.

Completing his schooling, there was very little that he could pursue due to the financial instability that the family lived with. Siva took up Visual Communication. Unable to pay for his education, along with the colossal burden of interest from previous loans, the satirist discontinued his studies.

“I had an insatiable interest in cartooning since my younger days, where I would draw something, paying little heed to my subjects in class,” Siva reminisces.

For him, caricaturing was seldom about making ends meet. On one such day, where he was cartooning a small boy frolicking at the Sembakkam MGR Children’s Park, the boy was intrigued seeing his salient facial feature, exaggerated, creating a comic effect.

“He paid me Rs 50, which became my first income as a caricaturist,” states the artist.

At times, as people fail to infer the beauty of caricaturing, it leaves Siva with the hurdle where he is unable to caricature his vision to life. He states “I make imitations of people, in which certain striking characteristics are exaggerated in order to create a grotesque effect. This can put people off who are still unaware of the art. But I find joy in encountering new faces, and sharing my impressions of them.”

The impressionist opines how at school, students are educated upon the use of pencils, colours and brushes to form diverse visual art, and not on how the beauty of art can be apprehended in the real world.

Siva says, “Stepping foot in the realm of art is not like sketching objects inside a classroom. The practical world has seen my works as demeaning, where some even tear off my impressions of them. Our schooling system fails to teach us how to deal with reality, and the regard an artist truly deserves.”