The Hindu

Mangalore, Nov 15: For the 100 children who participated in the preliminaries of The Hindu Young World Fest cartooning competition held in the spacious hall of the Corporation Bank Centenary Public Library here on Children’s Day, the event turned out to be a new way of looking at their heroes. The top 25 participants chosen by the judges will get another chance in the finals to be held at the Town Hall on Tuesday.

Asked to draw cartoons of their heroes, the participants, who initially seemed a tad confused between painting them and drawing caricatures, settled into a rhythm and came up with their vision. Personalities such as Gandhiji, M.S. Dhoni, Rajnikanth, Lalu Prasad, Upendra, various cartoon characters on the Cartoon Network and Pogo channels and even Lord Ganesh were manifested in a lighter vein.

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While most played if safe by drawing a cartoon of their favourite cartoon character, a few participants chose to make a telling comment on some burning problems of the region. The delay in starting passenger rail services between Mangalore and Bangalore caught the imagination of two participants, while another participant showed Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on a shopping stint with an ‘India bag’ in his hand.

Bollywood music director Bappi Lahiri, the former Miss World Aishwarya Bachchan nee Rai, Spider-Man and even the men in blue caught the fancy of these students from standards V to X. Some even plumped for the former President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam as well as “Chacha” Nehru as their heroes. Charlie Chaplin and Bollywood star Nana Patekar earned this distinction in the eyes of some of the other competitors.Organised in association with Corporation Bank, the maiden Young World Fest here will offer the children a chance to participate in a host of events, including group dance, flower arrangement, debating apart from cartooning. The participants selected for the finals of the cartoon competition will be personally intimated. More than 120 prizes are on offer in the finals of the various events to be held on Monday and Tuesday.