This man is a rare, great Typartist!

This man is a rare, great Typartist!

Bangalore: It was sometime back in during 1985-1987. I was working in Mungaru Kannada Daily from Mangalore in Dakshina Kannada District. And Prakash Shetty, cartoonist was my colleague in Editorial Section as well as roommate, in a small Mangalore tiled house on the beach of Arabian sea in Chitrapur.

Praksh Shetty used to write small write-ups to Mungaru during that days and one day he wrote about one  ‘Typartist’, if my memory is correct, I think that artist is one Mr. Chandrakanth Bhide, He effectively wrote about this man and how he creates art works through typewriter, which is a rare instrument today.

Today, I remembered it when I saw a report about Bhide, man from Mumbai and rare artist who was aged about 72 years, in the news18.com.

Really, Art has various expressions. Chandrakant Govind Bhide is one such artist. He makes pictures using the age-old typewriter.

He uses the symbols in a typewriter to create various images. He is capable of etching out images of Lord Ganesha, V Shantaram, Raj Kapoor, Dilip Kumar, Lata Mangeshkar, Saurav Ganguly and Sachin Tendulkar.

"When I was with Union Bank, I was once asked to type a list of telephone numbers. Instead of typing them as a list, I typed them in the shape of a telephone instrument. This was the first picture I made on the typewriter. My early efforts resembled cross-stitch embroidery" says Mr. Bhide.

Chandrakant Bhide is a typist by profession. In 1967 he joined the Union Bank of India and worked there for 3 decades.

‘Saching  Tendulkar’s curls gave me the most trouble!” Bhide remembers.

A rather implausible scenario for Tendulkar’s curls to give him grief, right?

A typist is required to be fast and accurate, and Bhinde proved he was precisely that but more too.

Throw in artistic to those set of skills, and you have Chandrakant Bhide.

“Art helped me meet important people. How else does a modest typist like me get to meet and be appreciated by people like R. K. Laxman and Mario Miranda,” questions Mr Chandrakant Bhide?

Mr Bhide is anything but ‘just a typist’. His art is indicative of his sheer talent and why the likes of the above-mentioned greats were his fans.


As a young man he had wanted to go to art school and become a commercial artist but his family was unable to afford the costs so he trained in stenography instead.

Growing up, he always wanted to join an art school – specifically the Sir J.J. School of Art in Mumbai.


But financial constraints forced him to take a more secure job.

Bhide was working in the administrative department of Union Bank of India when in 1967 his boss asked him to type up a list of staff intercom numbers.

“One day I was asked to type out a list of phone numbers, instead of typing a regular list, I made one in the shape of a telephone instrument,” he remembers. That was the beginning of many more artistic endeavours to come.

"I typed it in the form of a telephone itself. When I saw it I thought, 'This is fantastic, I can make art through this medium.' Everybody seemed to like it too," he recalls.

Bhide started using the "x" key to produce images to mark of Ganesh Chaturthi.

He then began to experiment with other keys -- including "w", dash, asterisk, ampersand and percentage sign -- progressing to create portraits of celebrities from India and abroad.

While Bhide takes only 15 minutes to draw Ganesha, several hours are required to complete a famous face in what is a painstaking process.

After some time one day, Mr Bhide sketched RK Laxman’s, Common Man. It was a time when Xerox machines had just made their appearance. His friend helped him get copies and requested to keep the original.

“I wanted to show the sketch to R.K. Laxman sir. I went to his office without an appointment and showed it to the cartoonist. Laxman sir was so thrilled with it that he said the result could not have been better with a pen and brush. We spent 1.30 hours talking, and I even mentioned my lost dream of studying in Sir J.J. School of Art, and he said, you can be an artist anyway!” he recalls.


Bhide continued to keep in touch with the famed cartoonist and takes great pride in having several original ‘Common Man’ sketches.

Over the years, Mr Bhide has created almost 150 sketches including several of people he admires including Amitabh Bachchan, Dilip Kumar, Sunil Gavaskar, Dr Ambedkar, Lata Mangeshkar, Bala Gangadhar Tilak and Vallabha Bhai Patel apart from politicians and film stars to cricketers, animation characters and religious symbols all art pieces by his typewriter over the past half century.

"I have done many personalities like Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi, Charlie Chaplin, Laurel and Hardy. This is my hobby, my passion," he tells news channels.

Bhide has held 12 exhibitions of his work and become something of a local celebrity since discovering his unique talent in the late 1960s while employed as a bank clerk.

 I feel it is time to give this great rare artist a big salute.

-NethrakereUdaya Shankara