E. P. Unny

Ekanath Padmanabhan Unny is an Indian political cartoonist.

He was born in Palakkad, Kerala. He studied physics at a university in Kerala.^[1]

His first cartoon was published in Shankar's Weekly in 1973. Upon sending some cartoons to The Hindu, the editor Gopalan Kasturi offered him to join full-time. Unny left his job as a bank official to start his career as a professional cartoonist with The Hindu in 1977, where he spent 12 years learning about journalism from Kasturi.^[2] After leaving The Hindu in 1989, he moved to Delhi and worked with the Sunday Mail where he experimented with different forms of cartooning – pocket and editorial, as well as started working as a graphic editor.^[2]

Subsequently, he moved to The Economic Times. He is currently the Chief Political Cartoonist with The Indian Express,^[1] in which his editorial strip, Business as Usual, appears daily.^[2]

He has drawn and written graphic novels in Malayalam and a travel book on Kerala, Spices & Souls: A Doodler's Journey Through Kerala. He is said to have been doing graphic shorts in Malayalam literary journals as early as the 1990s. He has also written Santa and the Scribes: The Making of Fort Kochi, which was published in 2014.^[3]

A recurring character who features in his cartoons is a bespectacled young boy who makes statements too mature for his years. This character was developed during his time at Sunday Mail and resumed when he moved to The Indian Express.^[2] Unny avoids drawing cartoons about religion, claiming to have no knowledge about the subject.^[2] Cartoonists who had an influence on him include R. K. Laxman, K. Shankar Pillai, O. V. Vijayan, Abu Abraham and Rajinder Puri.^[2]