Life in lines
and strokes

The life of Tokai, the famous cartoon-strip street urchin, who deliberates on socio-political issues, reflects, in many ways, the life of his creator Rafiqun Nabi, better known by his pen name Ronobi.
   ‘In my life I have seen and observed more than I have actually done,’ says the veteran artist whose Tokai gained immense popularity in the now-defunct Bichitra magazine and subsequently in its successor the Shaptahik 2000.
   ‘I have travelled through one political upheaval to another. In my early days I was swept up by the social, cultural, and political revolution of the sixties. This morning, I was all worked up about whether we will have an election or not,’ says the 63-year-old Ronobi when chatting with us in the living room of his creative haven, a three-storey, artistically-designed house with trees and uncoloured bricks, deep in the bowels of Shyamoli.
   Ronobi will be remembered in history for a wide spectrum of work that includes painting, drawing, print-making, writing, cartoons and activism all serving one single-minded purpose: to capture the important moments in the history he has witnessed around him.
   ‘I participated both through my work and otherwise in the war of independence and in the struggle against the autocratic rule of both Pakistani and Bangladeshi generals. My life’s mission has been to protest all forms of oppression,’ he says. ‘I have tried to participate in people’s movements through my association with newspapers, publishers, politicians, rights groups, and political platforms and I doubt whether anyone in my field has kept in touch with so many different fields.’
   And yet, side by side, Rafiqun Nabi has led the solitary life of an artist, a life in which he has produced an amazing array of work in all forms of creative media, leading him right to the top of his field.
   Even at the pinnacle of his career, that commitment remains.
   ‘For three months I would be up early in the morning, and hole myself in my studio on the roof of my house, re-emerging one or two in the morning, day after day,’ says Nabi about the months of work that were recently showcased in a solo exhibition, titled ‘Retrospective’.
   The exhibition, held during the recent political blockades, has predictably created a stir in Dhaka’s art scene, with hundreds pouring in every day, defying political strife on the streets. The works on display were an assembly of his work throughout his career. ‘This one was bought by the late Shahidullah Kaiser at one of my early joint exhibitions with [artist] Hashem Khan in 1968,’ he says pointing out to a watercolour landscape hanging on one of the walls of his living room.
   Born in 1943, Rafiqun Nabi is a stalwart of the generation of artists who grew up in the Dhaka of the fifties and sixties. Having had his schooling from the famous Pogose High School, he joined the Institute of Fine Arts, then called the Government Art College, in 1959.
   ‘My father was in the police and an amateur painter himself. Most people in my generation had to struggle against their parents to choose the life of an artists; I was literally encouraged to join it,’ says Nabi about his father, Rashidun Nabi, who was an aspiring artist who had to give up his dreams of studying art after his own father, also a policeman, forced him to carry on the tradition of joining the force.
   By the second year in college, Nabi had made a name for himself doing strips for local newspapers and doing illustrations for book covers.
   ‘We had pushed the price of doing illustrations from a paltry Tk 50 to a couple of hundreds: a lot of money during the time. I was earning between Tk 400 and Tk 500 each month, quite ample to afford my paint and brushes as well maintain an affluent lifestyle in the city.’
   At the Government Art College, Nabi studied under such legends as Zainul Abedin, Shafiuddin, Quamrul Hassan, Abdur Razzak and Aminul Islam, and having graduated atop his class, was recruited as a teacher of the institute in 1964. ‘At the time, my salary was Tk 180,’ he says.
   Although the young Nabi had dabbled with a variety of media, it was during this time that his illustrations and work with cartoon strips came of age.
   ‘I sold my first work while still in my first year in college, for Tk 15. By the time I became a teacher I had been working regularly for reputed Dhaka papers such as The Bangladesh Observer, Purba Desh and Chitrali. Abdul Ghani Hazari had a regular a satire column for which I did the illustration every week.’
   In the meantime, Nabi participated in regular group exhibitions and contests held in Pakistan and other places abroad. ‘West Pakistan had a thriving art scene while we had the big name artists. There were shows and galleries in Karachi, Tehran and Baghdad. I also participated regularly in the All Pakistan Group Show.’
   By the late 1960s, Nabi had made a name for himself as a young and promising water-colourist. He was being regularly commissioned work by most of the leading papers and magazines of the day, his political cartoons immensely popular with the public. Despite being a teacher, he also regularly worked with the leading political student bodies, doing festoons, banner, cartoons and artwork for political processions.
   Then 1971 struck.
   ‘Those were the darkest days. Initially, I wanted to go to war, but later reasoned that some people had to stay back in the city. I collected donations, clothes and food for freedom fighters. Secret meetings were held at my Narinda residence in the older part of Dhaka.’
   ‘I could not motivate myself to work. What was the point of drawing when people close to you were dying and you could be the next one to be picked up by the Pakistan army?’ says Nabi.
   When victory finally came and everyone was celebrating, Nabi embarked upon a new episode of his life when he received a scholarship to do post-graduate studies at the Athens School of Fine Arts, Greece in 1973.
   While the three-year programme was supposed to be a get-away from the traumatising events in his country, history would not set Nabi free.
   ‘Soon after I arrived in Athens there was a military takeover. Then, the Greeks were preparing for a war against Turkey over Cyprus. Everyone in Greece would tease me that I had imported political trouble from Bangladesh to Greece. Once again, I found myself moving around in political circles, working on festoons and banners.’
   By the second year of his stay, Nabi had secured for himself once again work on book illustrations from which he saved up enough money to make a trip around Europe.
   ‘I went to Rome, Paris, London, Cairo and Barcelona and studied the original works of the great masters. It was an enlightening experience and I decided that once I went back I would cut down on cartoon strips and book covers and concentrate more on my work.’
   But political events had other plans for Nabi.
   ‘When I came back to the country in 1976 it was in an agitated and insecure state. Soon, the late Shahadat Chowdhury, an old friend and the then editor of Bichitra convinced me to return to cartoon strips that would address the issues affecting our country at the time.’
   But Nabi was not interested in repeating his old work. This time, he wanted to develop a theme, a character, a story, which could run as a series.
   ‘I would regularly meet this boy, named Mokka, sitting at my door. He was really small in size and stature, wore nothing but a ‘lungi’ and held the knot in his hand. I presumed he had had his circumcision recently.’
   ‘Though he did not really say the things that I put into Tokai’s mouth, the boy was insightful and sharp nonetheless and became the inspiration for Tokai.’
   And so it started.
   For the next two decades and a half, Tokai became a mouthpiece for Bangladesh’s social consciousness and conscience, addressing all the issues of the day, with a tiny caricature of Nabi adorning a corner of the strip.
   While Nabi worked with Tokai and took active part in the political movement to oust Bangladesh’s military dictator HM Ershad as a president of the artists association in the 1980s, his private work: the paintings on oil, acrylic and water colour and woodcut also begin to flourish.
   ‘The thriving art scene of the nineties, with galleries sprouting up everywhere was finally allowing many artists like me to settle down and work only as an artist,’ says Nabi.
   But one lesser known avatar of Nabi, something that he has worked upon prolifically over the years, is his writing. In 1991, he published his first children’s’ novel and till date has published five such novels.
   ‘I have been writing since my school days, my first poem published sometime in 1957 to 1958. I regularly contribute to newspapers even today,’ he says.
   Even today, Nabi continues his crusade.
   ‘I write on-and-off columns for some of the leading newspapers and I do cartoons for Janakantha at times,’ says Nabi. He sets his priorities on his personal artwork nowadays.
   And where does the future take him? ‘To get better in my art. You can never change what you are drawing but you can get better at it. That is what I have tried to do all my life. And that is what I will do in the future.’
   ‘And of course, see where things go,’ says Nabi who has documented his life and the life of ordinary people through his personal art, at the same time, documenting the social and political history of Bangladesh through his alter ego ‘Tokai’.
   
   Text: Mubin S Khan / Photo: Andrew Biraj