We saw his cartoons in the next day's paper, says wife

PUNE: He was a cartoonist of nationwide fame, but R K Laxman left work strictly at office, never discussing his cartoons with the family, recalled his wife Kamala Laxman.
“Once he came home at 5pm, there was no mention of office. He never spoke about the cartoon he drew during the day . We only saw his cartoons in the next day's paper,“ she told TOI, adding, “The whole world knows about him.He was such a public figure. I seem to know less about him than others."
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Describing her husband as a person “untouched by fame“, she said that whenever he was asked to mention a cartoon that he was particularly proud of he always replied, “I have not done my best yet.“ She recalled that she knew him while growing up and he was present in Mysore on the day she was born.“I had decided, this is the person for me,“ she said.
Kamala said that Laxman's humility and mischievous nature were the most striking features of his personality .
“We carried on like children. I used to call him `doddu' and he would call me `amma!' Later, I started calling him `baby'; it suited him well, he was just like a child. Our family has a knack of creating unusual pet names, you see,“ she said.

A cartoon drawn in tribute to RK Laxman by a Times of India reader, Nitin Sangwan.
Laxman's son, Srinivas recalled that the common man holding the tricolour on Mars was the last cartoon that his father drew. Srinivas said that he re ceived a special request from the Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) for a cartoon to celebrate 100 days of the Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM). And Laxman obliged by drawing not one, but two cartoons in December 2014.
“I am in constant touch with Isro scientists. One of my friends there asked me if my father could make a sketch on the common man reaching Mars. My mother said that she would try to convince him, but we knew that we could not be sure if he would actually draw one,” Srinivas told TOI. Based in Mum bai, Srinivas said that in the last week of December, his mother asked him to rush to Pune.
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“When I came to Pune, I got to know that dad had made two sketches of the common man holding the Indian flag on Mars,“ he said.
One of the earliest memories that Srinivas has of Laxman is his father dropping him off to school.
“On our way to school, he would describe to me everything he saw on the streets of Mumbai -people on the bus stop, schoolchildren, people waking up on the pavement, among other things. I still remember, we would chat with him at night while he sat with a drink. Those memories will remain etched in my mind forever,“ said Srinivas, who himself has made only one sketch in his life, when he was at Wolsingham School in Mumbai, and also won a prize for it.
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Srinivas said that the legendary cartoonist never conformed to rituals.“My father was accorded a simple funeral, without the rituals he himself never followed. I still remember my father's reaction when he heard the news of his mother passing away . He had this habit of sitting with a drink at 9pm and listening to the radio. One day , he received a phone call from his brother informing him of his mother's demise. She had passed away in Mysore.My father was immensely shaken with the news, but did not go to Mysore. He was very progressive; he did not observe rituals and was not a traditionalist,“ said Srinivas.