Vasant Saravate, Cartoonist, Chronicler And lllustrator Of Bourgeoisie Chasm

Vasant Saravate, Cartoonist, Chronicler and llustrator Of Cultural Landscape and who defined an era of humour in struggles, predicament and socio psychological chasms of middle class life dies at 89 in Vile Parle. He was the icon of bygone days of cultural diversities from P L Deshpande, Jayavant Dalvi to Vijay Tendulkar and featured the legendary cover cartoons of Lalit for nearly 50 years.

The humour and contradictions he illustrated had changed significantly, with dawn of the new marathi middle class, whose sensibilities had a tectonic shift in post liberalization era with exponentially rising incomes and newly acquired prosperity. The ironies of his illustrations and cartoons, the wry and sometimes self demeaning humour had replaced the mediocre and insensitively crafted entertainment values in the new media.

He could have laughed at it, perhaps with a cartoon, with him as protagonist, as he said adieu to life, with end of true humour.