T. R. Mahalingam, better known by his pen-name Mali, was an illustrator and cartoonist from Tamil Nadu, India, in the pre-independence era. He was the Tamil Press's first caricaturists, according to Chennai historian S. Muthiah in

The Hindu ''The Hindu'' is an Indian English-language daily newspaper owned by The Hindu Group, headquartered in Chennai, Tamil Nadu. It began as a weekly in 1878 and became a daily in 1889. It is one of the Indian newspapers of record and the secon ...

. Muthiah has written elsewhere that Mali did as much with his strokes for Vikatan as its celebrated editor Kalki Krishnamurthy did with his words. Mali published his drawings in the

Indian Express ''The Indian Express'' is an English-language Indian daily newspaper founded in 1932. It is published in Mumbai by the Indian Express Group. In 1999, eight years after the group's founder Ramnath Goenka's death in 1991, the group was split betw ...

in the 1930s, and first made his name at the

Free Press Journal ''The Free Press Journal'' is an Indian English-language daily newspaper that was established in 1928 by Swaminathan Sadanand, who also acted as its first editor. First produced to complement a news agency, the Free Press of India, it was a su ...

'before being immortalised in the pages of Ananda Vikatan, the first popular Tamil periodical'. He also did cartoons for the Vikatan group's English-language

Merry Magazine Merry may refer to: A happy person with a jolly personality People * Merry (given name) * Merry (surname) Music * Merry (band), a Japanese rock band * ''Merry'' (EP), an EP by Gregory Douglass * "Merry" (song), by American power pop band Mag ...

, where he became the editor in 1935. He is said to have left the editorial nitty-gritty to his assistant editor, while continuing to illustrate such humorous serials as 'Private Joyful in Madras' (The magazine shut down in c. 1935 or 1936). While it was the writer and poet Subramanya Bharathi who first introduced cartoons to Tamil journalism, it was Ananda Vikatan that made them truly popular. As cartoonist and senior artist at Ananda Vikatan, Mali was thus a key influence on a second generation of cartoonists.

Gopulu S. Gopalan, pen-name Gopulu (18 June 1924 – 29 April 2015), was a Tamil illustrator and cartoonist, known for his work for the Tamil humour magazine '' Ananda Vikatan''. Born in Tanjore in 1924, Gopulu spent his early years in the city. He studi ...

and

Silpi P.M. Sreenivasan (1919-1983), who adopted the name Silpi, was a Tamil illustrator, best known for his detailed renditions of Tamil architecture and sculpture in Ananda Vikatan magazine. Life and career Sreenivasan studied art at the Madras Scho ...

were illustrators he mentored at Vikatan. According to Tamil film historian

Randor Guy Madabhushi Rangadorai (born 8 November 1937), better known by his pen name Randor Guy, is an Indian lawyer, columnist and film and legal historian associated with the English language newspaper ''The Hindu''. He is also the official editor of the ...

, Mali designed the famous logo for Gemini Studios, which depicts cherubic twin buglers. Mali died in c. 1947, according to an obituary in ''The Indian Review''.

References

Year of birth missing Year of death missing Indian cartoonists {{India-artist-stub