Cartoons, no laughing matter

Nalaka Gunawardene and Vindana Ariyawansa Cartoons, no laughing matter

Cartoons not only make fun of daily events, but often offer deeper meaning and comic relief to our stressful modern lives. Drawing cartoons requires a rare combination of caricaturizing skills, sense of humour and wit. Good cartoonists are not just fine entertainers and social satirists, but also popular philosophers of our time. It is hard to beat them on their sheer economy of words: sometimes their work says so much with so little.

We begin today’s Wiz Quiz saluting two great cartoonists of our times.

1. W R (Wijerupage) Wijesoma was Sri Lanka’s pre-eminent political cartoonist for five decades until his death in 2006. Starting his career at the Times of Ceylon, he worked for The Observer from 1968 to 1981, and later was the principal cartoonist for The Island.

He created the well known cartoon character of an average Sri Lankan who dressed in a cloth and usually carrying an umbrella and a rickety and empty bag. All those who knew Wijesoma recognised that this was a self-caricature. What was the name he gave this character, which became iconic in journalism and cartoon culture in Sri Lanka?

2. Rasipuram Krishnaswamy Iyer Laxman, better known as R K Laxman, is widely regarded as India’s greatest-ever cartoonist. Now 86 and ailing, he drew a daily cartoon strip, named ‘You Said It’, in The Times of India for over 50 years starting in 1951.

In this, he created his best known character, a male who represented the hopes, aspirations, troubles and perhaps even foibles of the average Indian. By what name is this character known? A 10-feet high bronze statue of this endearing and enduring character has been erected at the Symbiosis Institute in Pune.

3. Indian cartoonist and satirist R K Laxman is also known for his distinctive illustrations in several story books, most notably for the Malgudi stories written by his elder brother, who was one of India’s greatest fiction writers in the English language. Malgudi is a fictitious town in India created in this author’s novels and short stories. Starting with Swami and Friends, all but one of his 15 novels and most of his short stories take place in this village, which he portrayed as a microcosm of India. Who created Malgudi?

4. Pizza is one of the world’s favourite fast-foods. In Italy, there is a bill before Parliament to safeguard the traditional Italian pizza, specifying permissible ingredients and methods of processing (for example excluding frozen pizzas). Only pizzas which followed these guidelines would be called ‘traditional Italian pizzas’ in Italy. In which Italian city did the modern pizza originate as the Neapolitan pie with tomato?

5. Eat, Pray, Love is a 2010 movie directed by Ryan Murphy and starring Julia Roberts. It is based on Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman’s Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia, a 2006 memoir by an American woman author that chronicles the author’s trip around the world after her divorce and what she discovered during her travels. The book remained on The New York Times Best Seller list for 187 weeks. Who wrote the book?

6. The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UN-FCCC) is an international environmental treaty adopted in 1992 to stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere that cause global warming. The treaty entered into force on March 21, 1994 and has now been signed by more than 190 countries including Sri Lanka. In which European city is the Secretariat of the UN-FCCC located?

7. Tea, rubber and coconut have long been the three major plantation crops of Sri Lanka. In 2005, the government of Sri Lanka declared another plant as the fourth plantation crop, primarily to serve as an alternative source to the energy crisis. This fast-growing, nitrogen fixing tree is used in many tropical and sub-tropical countries for various purposes such as live fencing, fodder, coffee shade, firewood and green manure. This tree can be grown on less fertile lands or on lands with steep slopes. What is it?

8. Name the world famous Hollywood actress who once remarked: “The most difficult problem for any actress is trying to understand the difference between reality and make-believe.” Although her own life was relatively free of scandals, she also noted that “You find out who your real friends are when you’re involved in a scandal.”

9. Electrical energy is measured in joules. However, a ‘unit’ of electricity is also used for measuring and billing electricity distributed to consumers. What is the technical definition of a unit of electricity?

10. These days it is common for the President of the United States to travel overseas. That was not always the case. It was in 1906 that a sitting US president first visited a foreign country. Who was this US president, who made this first overseas official visit, to Panama for three days in connection with the Panama Canal?

11. Who was the first Prime Minister of Israel to have been born within the territory that he went on to rule over? All the Prime Ministers before him were born in foreign countries and later emigrated to Israel.

12. American swimmer Michael Phelps went to the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing looking to break Mark Spitz’s earlier record of seven gold medals. However, the quest almost ended early in the 4 x 100m freestyle relay. Which swimmer swam the anchor leg and made up a near full body length lead, helping Phelps to realize his dream of winning eight gold medals in a single Olympic game, a feat achieved by no one else?

13. Born in 1960, this gifted Argentinean led his country to their second soccer World Cup victory in 1986. He scored the controversial “Hand of God” goal against England in the quarter final, before beating West Germany in the finals. He was suspended in 1991 for cocaine addiction and quit international football after failing the dope test in the 1994 World Cup. Who is he?

14. In 1274, the Mongol warrior Kublai Khan invaded Japan. After landing his troops, the weather turned bad and he had to retreat. The winds sank 200 of Kublai Khan’s ships and killed over 13,000 of his men. What did the Japanese call the weather that day? It is known as the ‘Divine Winds’ in English and assumed a different meaning during the Second World War.

15. This island located in Southeast Asia covers a land area of 786,000 square km and is the second largest in the world. It was formerly shared by European colonial powers, the Netherlands and Germany, and later replaced by Australia.

Now the island is part of the fourth most populous country in the world, and shared with a small developing state which gained independence in 1975. Also known by some as the second largest island in the world. What is it?

Answers will be published next week

Last week’s answers

1. Senator Gaylord Nelson
2. Professor Canaganayagan Suriyakumaran
3. Edward O. Wilson, known as the ‘father of biodiversity’
4. Robonaut2, abbreviated as R2
5. Trincomalee
6. King Agbo II
7. Viragaya (The Way of the Lotus)
8. Sierra Leone
9. Roger Gilbert Bannister
10. Alexandr Solzhenitsyn (1918-2008)
11. National Geographic Magazine
12. Bahrain and Qatar
13. Aung San (1915-1947)
14. Nylon
15. Amedeo Avogadro (1776-1856)