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Our close engagement with web based comics and illustrations is bringing us in touch with several kinds of practitioners whose work is not necessarily linked to the gallery viewing context or main stream media circulation. One such exciting and unforeseen encounter took place when Vidya Shivadas (Director, FICA) introduced us to a massive body of cartoons (approx 10,000) by Inder Bhan Madan. This developed into 'Daily Chronicles of Inder Bhan Madan', a collaborative project between BlueJackal and FICA.

Inder Bhan Madan was born on October 3, 1909 in Dera Ghazi Khan in Multan, Frontier Province. His wife Kamala Madan (born June 21, 1921) was from the same village. He finished his mechanical engineering from Lahore. He joined the Post and Telegraph Department soon after and was posted to various places.  From 1956 to 1958 he was in Kashmir, then Indore until 1961. While in Assam between 1961 and 1964 the Indo China War broke out and he was sent to places like Bomdila and high altitude Sela Pass in Arunachal Pradesh to set up communication systems for the army. The Madan clan grew to accommodate four daughters and a son.  His final posting was in Delhi until 1967 when he retired as Divisional Engineer, Post and Telegraph Department. Following his retirement he managed tea estates in Assam and then spent a decade in Kerseong before returning to Delhi in the mid 1980s. Mr Madan passed away in 2007 in New Delhi.

 

Mr. Madan' daughter Professor Shobha Madan, a mathematics professor at IISER Mohali, has been organising the 50 years plus archive of his cartoons, made from the 1950s onwards up until early 2000s. She shared with us, her father's work and memories of seeing him make these cartoons. She also expressed her keen desire to share them with a wider audience. She has shared with us a very beautiful piece about her father's work which you can read here. BlueJackal and FICA are extremely happy to commence the online publication of Chronicles of Inder Bhan Madan, which will  now be a regular feature on BlueJackal website. A selection of his cartoons were exhibited in April 2017 at the exhibition 'C 13: An Exhibition | A Proposition | A Playground | A House' curated by Vidya Shivadas.

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*PLEASE NOTE: All rights to the images published here remains with Professor Shobha Madan. For any further use of the images, please contact us.

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