Laxman's age

 I  am puzzled by the media reporting that RK Laxman was born in 1921 and died aged 93/94.  I attribute this to laziness and using Wikipedia as a source.  (Encyclopedia Brit says 1924, as did The Hindu, whose byline initially  had (1924-2015), but it was changed to be consistent with the obit written by Meena Menon).

Laxman was one of my father's close friends from their teenage days in Mysore, neighbours in fact in Laxmipuram.   Laxman was a year below my father in college.   Keeping in touch over the years, they  were part of a   "gang of four" close college friends:  Kittu (the well-known filmmaker MV Krishnaswamy, b August 1923), TS Satyan (the famous photographer, b Dec 1923), Shouri (HY Sharada Prasad, b April 1924) and Laxman (b Oct 1924) -- laugh a minute conversations, often quite quite wicked about their friends and others. 

For some reason, perhaps as late as 2011, Laxman's family seems to have told a journalist that he was actually born in 1921, which makes little sense in relation to the timeline of his classmates' lives.