'Heaviest' cartoonist sketches 651 caricatures

KOCHI: You cannot take him lightly! The heaviest (no pun intended!) cartoonist in the country was racing against time sketching at the Thrikkakara Vamanamoorthy Temple on Sunday as a part of the Uthraadappachil organised by the Kerala Cartoon Academy.

Sajjive, who calls himself the fat cartoonist, sketched 651 caricatures from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. and the last one he sketched was his wife's.

Sajjive Balakrishnan, a public relations officer with the Income Tax Department, keeps the smile on for everybody who walks into his official cabin at IT Bhavan, but his observant eyes are tracing the facelines and hairlines of his guests into memory.

If the visitor is not somebody who takes offence of being Sajjive's subject, you bet that he will get a signed caricature to go back with!

Talking of his subjects, he says that caricaturing old people is easy. But they are difficult to please, but, children are difficult to draw because their faces are clean, devoid of any lines. "Yet, they glow with delight when you start sketching them," he says.

Being a government official, he stays off politics and political leaders as a matter of principle. "I have sketched people in the department and have been actively supported by all officials," he said.

Sajjive, who has been cartooning as a teenager, must have done around 14,000 caricatures since his mother showed him the way, and his father gave him the charcoal from the firewood in his traditional home.

"When I joined the IT Department, I had been doing speed caricaturing," he said. Like most cartoonists ,Sajjhas whacky humour and a smiling personality.

Added to it is his ability to give uniqueness to size. "A spot caricaturist, especially of the fat kind is a rarity," he says. Giving him good support from behind the scene are his mother, singerwife Lekha R Nair, and son Siddharth.