Gogi may have arrived on the scene in 1971 but the character had been inside Nigar Nazar’s head for much longer than that. “I went to school with Gogi. It’s the name of a school classmate of mine,” says Nigar. “My classmate was a very popular child. Everyone liked her,” she adds.

As for Nigar herself, she was a very creative little girl who loved to draw. But she did her graduation in English Literature. “I could draw but I wanted to learn how to make cartoons. Not finding any institute offering any such course in Rawalpindi, I came down to Karachi to see if I could learn the art there,” she says.

In Karachi, she would go to the Arts Council everyday but even there she couldn’t find anyone who could teach her cartoons. Still she got to rub shoulders with many big artists of the day. “I still have a cartoon on my living room wall that is very dear to me. It is a cartoon of the great Sadequain that was sketched by Aziz Cartoonist of the Morning News,” she informs.

“The cartoon was the late Sadequain Sahib’s idea. He told Aziz Sahib that this girl comes to the Arts Council everyday in the hope of learning how to make cartoons so why not give her a demonstration. Saying that, he volunteered to model for Aziz Sahib with his cigarette in hand. And after the sketch was done he, Aziz Sahab and myself signed it,” Nigar says. “The drawing was then presented to me. Though I didn’t get to learn much from it, it still gave me a lot of encouragement.”

Among her other artist friends was the late Ali Imam, who had instructed her to make a cartoon everyday. “I used to borrow books on art from the Institute of Arts and Craft and Ali Imam Sahab there wanted to know if those books were doing me any good so he told me to show him a cartoon everyday. He was a very strict principal and a man of few words,” she laughs at the memory. “But he also published my first Gogi cartoon in four panels on a full page in the institute’s annual magazine,” she says.