: Sushil Kalra – An HT Cartoonist : Sushil Kalra was born on a sizzling day, the 13th of June, 1940 at Gujranwala, now Pakistan. After dabbling a lot in various sciences, he realized his aptitude and joined the College of Arts in New Delhi. Working as an ad man, he found that the products he campaigned for became more popular than him, and he started scribbling humor drawings under his initials. Subsequently, he completely drifted into the world of humor and by 1968, was drawing cartoons for Hindustan Times publications. His cartoons used to appear on the front page of Hindi Hindustan and Evening News.
Widely travelled abroad, as far as the North pole, his works were exhibited and published in several Western and European Countries. He had a number of political columns, including his creation, Chittu Nittu,a column in Nandan, an HT monthly children’s magazine. He had been drawing this children cartoons strip for 44 years. He wrote a novel (Nikka Nimana), subsequently translated in Punjabi and English.
He was a well-known Indian TV personality and was interviewed on BBC. He presented a 38 episode primetime Sunday TV quiz and was selected as one of the top 10 Indian Cartoonists in a TV series. Upon retirement from Hindustan Times, he started spending a considerable time in US with his sons. To help aspiring artists he joined International Artists Support Group (IASG), a 
Washington DC, organization. He single handedly organized 6 international exhibits for this group at Lalit Kala Academy in New Delhi.
In 2011, he was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer. When his daughter in law (cancer doctor) broke the news to him. He told his family, not to disclose the diagnosis to anyone, as he did not want anyone to ask “how he is doing”. While undergoing chemotherapy treatment, he started at a rapid speed to finish the translation of “Nikka Nimana” in English. He also regularly continued to submit the monthly chittu Nittu script from US, irrespective of his health condition. Upon finishing the Nikka Nimana’s translation, he decided that he needed to write about the most important segment of his life, partition of India and Pakistan and his experience as a 7 year old child through this event, Ek Mat, Kayamat. Both the books are in-print.
Sushil Kalra passed away on September 8, 2013 in Maryland USA. He was surrounded by wife, two sons, daughters in laws and grandchildren.
