What a life!: From the cartoonist who spoke truth to power

One panel shows two skeletons reading a news story headlined Electric crematorium for Delhi' and wondering what would happen if there was a power breakdown, another depicts an impoverished man begging Indira Gandhi to give him back his "gareebi".

The two cartoons, the first a commentary on the lack of even the most basic infrastructure and the other mocking Indira Gandhi's 'Gareebi Hatao' programme, are but a small sampling of the late Rajinder Puri's works.

The cartoonist-commentator, who died in 2015, is described variously "pugnacious", "unwavering" and "acerbic" by his friends and admirers, who gathered here last week for the release of "What a Life!", a collection of his political cartoons.

The book, by author Arvindar Singh and filmmaker-critic Partha Chaterjee, features 130 political cartoons from 1960 till 2010.

The cartoons underscore the continuing relevance of many of the issues he took up and also the fact that Puri always dared to speak truth to power.

So, there's a cartoon of former PM Indira Gandhi, showing Puri as a barking dog while she holds a sketch imagining herself as an angel and one of Jawaharlal Nehru as Napoleon making a retreat in Moscow with bodies strewn all around after the Indo-China war of 1962.

"Puri, just like other sensitive cartoonists, was a case of wounded humanity , said long-time friend, veteran journalist Vinod Dua, part of the panel to discuss Puri's works.

I never considered him a humorist. He was a satirist," he added.

Dua made special mention of the "Gareebi Hatao" cartoon, showing a poor man telling an imperious Indira Gandhi, "Please madam can I get back my gareebi? I have been miserable ever since it was removed."