Who is the greatest Mysorean of our times? Difficult question, given that Mysore has produced some of the best minds in India, and the world.

Two names that come to everybody's mind are R K Narayan and his younger brother R K Laxman.

Rashipuram Krishnaswamy Iyer Narayanaswamy, better known as R K Narayan, introduced early 20th century India to the West through his fiction. It wouldn't be wrong to say that Narayan immortalised Mysore by creating an imaginary town called Malgudi.

The day he died, The New York Times said, "Mr Narayan was a Tamil Brahmin, a member of arguably India's most intellectually gifted caste and of a community intensely devoted to education and the arts that has produced, in addition to writers, a number of renowned scientists ".

Sadly, the NYT gives more credit to his caste than to his genius! People perhaps say the same thing of Laxman.

If Narayan is the most famous Mysorean in the English space, Laxman undoubtedly deserves the second most famous Mysorean title.

Generations of Indians grew up reading Laxman's pocket cortoon in The Times of India. Narayan wrote about common people and their extraordinary lives. Laxman gave them a voice through his cartoons. Mysore has a great literary tradition and its best representative in the English language happen to be Narayan and Laxman.

These brothers tapped into the educated middle class experience, the very class that reads their fiction and cartoons.

V K Ramachandran writes in Frontline in 1998:

"Narayan is India's greatest writer in English of this century, one of the world's major literary figures. His youngest brother, R K Laxman, is way and ahead India's finest cartoonist, and one of the world's best. Their autobiographies, Narayan's My Days, published in 1974, and Laxman's The Tunnel of Time, which I have just read, provide clues towards an explanation of how one family can produce two such outstanding creative figures.

"It happens very rarely but it has happened elsewhere. They express individual genius, which has always defied explanation, but they are also products of a particular family and social milieu that has been congenial to creativity: liberal and modern in outlook, yet imbued with strong values and laidback integrity and respectful of independence and originality ".

What makes them so special? What is the greatness of our uncommon common man Laxman?

We at CNN IBN are proud that we conferred a Lifetime Achievement Award on Laxman last week.

The wheelchair-bound Laxman (84) cried like a baby as former President APJ Abdul Kalam and others watched in amazement. The tears were unexpected. The grim faced czar of cartooning is not known to demonstrate his emotions in public.

During a recent visit to home town Mysore, Laxman was philosophical. He said he was missing Mysore, but in the same breath added, "No point in being sentimental, we have to go with the time".

A Mysorean writes in his website, "At a time when the political class was falling over each other putting in applications for the Bharat Ratna, the channel conferred a Lifetime Achievement Award on a real jewel: Rasipuram Krishnaswamy Laxman, the Mysore-born cartoonist whose common man has held a mirror to the birth, rise and growth of a nation on the front page of The Times of India for well over 50 years now through You Said It.

"The adjectives flowed freely, and for once unquestionably justly, as Laxman, now bound to a wheelchair after a paralytic stroke three years ago, was ushered in on stage. "For a lifetime of contributions to society, for a lifetime of achievements," said anchors Vidya Shankar Aiyar and Suhasini Haider. "For having done the nation proud, for having been a part of our lives," said CNN IBN Editor in Chief Rajdeep Sardesai.

"For being one of the most incisive observers of post-independence India; for making millions of Indians smile every single morning for over 60 years; and for giving the common man of this country, a face, a voice, an identity and a consistent presence and importance in every aspect of our lives."

Laxman's committment and curiosity, his unfailing humour and irony have elevated him to iconic status. It isn't easy to draw cartoons day after day for over 60 years. Laxman has done the job like a true saint.

You may not always like Laxman's cartoons. Sometimes they may sound dry and lacking in zaniness. But you will definitely appreciate his mastery over the medium, his craftsmanship, and his unending search for humour in what may otherwise appear to be a humdrum life.

All cartoonists, young and old, ridicule politicians. But the greatness of Laxman is that he never ridicules the poor and the underpreviliged. That makes him stand tall above many younger cartoonists. That's what makes him great.