On Tuesday last week, (2 April) the neighbourhood had a big loss as renowned cartoonist Rahnu, breathed his last. SK Ramanujam, popularly known as Rahnu, was 80 years old. Apart from being a successful cartoonist, Rahnu spent his later part of life in teaching the art to numerous students.
Speaking about him, his son-in-law, R Boopathy says, “He was always engrossed in drawing cartoons and he wanted to spread the art to the next generation. He travelled around the globe to conduct training in the field of cartoon and was acknowledged as an innovative cartoonist. He was doing research to depict cartoons in Indian style.”
“He was inspired by Walt Disney cartoons and wanted to create an Indian cartoon character and did Kutty and Kundu animation. He has featured in more than 4500 programmes in different media and he was the only artist in India to have done a show called Raanuvin Cartoon Neram in a popular channel which ran for more than 52 weeks.”
He also established Rahnu Cartoon and Educational Trust in Mylapore. “The center was used by him for his research in this field. Based on his experiences in cartoon he has even compiled two books namely Kelipadakkalai, a two volume book and Learn the art of cartooning, which contains five volumes. These books are yet to be published and we wanted to do it soon,” he says.
About his love of teaching the art to students, he said, “From 1986 to 2014 he conducted summer camps and competitions for children and gave them awareness about cartoons. He wanted to convey that anyone can become a cartoonist. However, one regret he had was his students did not continue with the cartoon once they complete class 10. He always was of the opinion that learning cartoon will help children in their studies as their creative skill is getting improved. He was always happy to teach students which unfortunately could not continue after 2014 as his health detoriated,” said Boopathy.
Boopathy, along with Rahnu’s students now plan to spread his work. “We are planning to go the digital way and help his teachings reach the school students. He always desired for it and we want to take it forward and make his works live forever.”
Condole with Boopathy at 94442 48579.