You wait years for an event with an Indian cartoonist in Dundee and then two come along within a fortnight. At the end of June last year Scottish PEN and Literary Dundee hosted an event sponsored by the then ubiquitous Commonwealth Games. In an event entitled Reinterpreting Women’s Stories using the Surreal and the Mythological Karrie Fransman from the UK and Amruta Patil from India discussed the “mythological and fantastic aspects of their work.” This was the first time I had encountered Patil’s comics, and I was captivated by her work. Her first book Kari (2008) is the story of “a young, deeply introverted, asocial and queer woman, a counterpoint to the hyperfeminine prototypes you keep coming across.” The book concerns lost love, survival and friendship, and is beautifully drawn in black ink with pencil shading but with frequent bursts of colour. Her latest book Adi Parva – Churning of the Ocean (2012) is the first in her two volume adaptation of the Mahabharat, one of the major epics of ancient India. If I’d had enough money I would have bought both books on the spot but I decided to go for Kari (start at the beginning of a career!). Patil took the time to chat to the people buying her books and graciously drew dedications in them all. It was a joy to watch her sketch on my copy.
The opening page of Kari (2008) © Amruta Patil
The Mahabharat has been adapted countless times over the centuries in various media including a 42 volume comics series from Amit Chitra Katha (ACK). Founded in 1967 by Anant Pai, ACK was for a long time pretty much the entire Indian comics industry and they have released over 440 issues. Having published English language comics featuring American heroes such as The Phantom, Pai realised that there was a desire for comics featuring Indian characters and stories. They moved from publishing European stories such as Cinderella in Hindi to Indian stories such as Krishna in English (to appeal to a middle class readership). During the 1970s the original art from the stories in ACK was relettered to make issues available in Hindi and various other regional languages including Bengali, Malayalam, Kannada, and Assamese. By the end of the decade ACK had become the best-selling comic book series in India (McLain 2009).
Sharad Sharma by Sharad Sharma
While I enjoy fictional stories based in myth as much as the next reader, what I truly love are stories told by ordinary people about their own lives created in their own words and pictures. A few weeks before the Patil and Fransman talk I received an email from the education officer at Dundee Contemporary Arts (my office is in their building and I have occasionally hosted comics making workshops for them). It explained that a comics artist from India was hosting a workshop for the local authority and wondered if I would like to take part. I was intrigued and said I would be delighted to attend. The workshop was hosted by Sharad Sharma of the World Comics Network.
Sharma is a cartoonist based in New Delhi, India. He was associated with several newspapers and magazines as a journalist and editorial cartoonist before he switched to electronic media and introduced political animation to Indian TV news channels. A committed comics activist, Sharma founded the World Comics Network (WCN) as a way of empowering people to tell their own stories and to raise issues important to them. The WCN slogan Comics Power! is no accident and they teach workshops to hand that power to people all over the world. He set up World Comics to promote issues based “Grassroots Comics” – short stories produced on easily reproducible photocopier paper made by the people directly affected by the issues. According to their website the network is active in India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Brazil, Thailand, Palestine, Estonia, Finland, UK, Tanzania, Mozambique, Benin and Mongolia.
ABCD of Grassroots Comics is #Anybodycandraw pic.twitter.com/KMqllmNtC5
— World Comics Network (@WorldComicsNet) July 14, 2014
Sharma explained his methodology for encouraging people to draw their own stories, what he called the ABCD of comics. If anyone has been in earshot of me over the last few months (including at the ‘zines’ discussion at the Scottish Comics Unconference Meet-up last weekend) you will have heard me excitedly explaining this idea. It is this simple – Any Body Can Draw. Really. That’s it. This effortless philosophy lies at the heart of everything WCN do, and it helps to empower people to tell their stories. As the WCN website says most of the time these Grassroots Comics are “linked to some organisation activity or the social campaign. The comics are photocopied and distributed to a limited area, which encourage local debate in the society. They are inexpensive and the method is not complicated, you just require a pen, paper and access to a copying machine to produce one.” WCN also promotes the idea of stripping down a story to four panels to tell it succinctly and clearly as possible. These four panel strips can then be used like posters around the towns and villages.
World Comics Network FAQ © Sharad Sharma
There are many parallels with the fanzine boom of the 1970s which coincided with punk and a “do-it-yourself” philosophy. Fanzines existed at least as early as the 1930s but the access to cheap reproduction helped cause an explosion of self expression in the 1970s. Like these zines the creators of Grassroots Comics own the content, unlike them the distribution isn’t limited to being handed out at gigs or by mail order. The comics are pasted up in all possible locations such as the “village’s meeting place, bus stops, shops, offices, schools, on notice-boards and electricity poles or even on trees.” It is almost impossible to not see these short comics and the message they promote.
It seems slightly odd to have discussed both Sharma and Patil’s work in this post during Graphixia’s series on comics from countries other than Europe, North America and Japan (snappy title) as they have very little in common apart from the country they were born in, and that is such an arbitrary notion to base a post on. But I did discover their work within two weeks of each other, and both of their comics are a testament to the different powers of comics. The myth based richly textured stories of Patil that work so well in comics, and the short straight forward four-panel strips of real life that Sharma and the World Comics Network help bring to public attention. Like graphic novels and newspaper strips, they are very different but still contain the power of comics.
Comics Power to the people!
Works cited
Gravett, Paul (2012) Amruta Patil: India’s First Female Graphic Novelist
McLain, Karline (2009) India’s Immortal Comic Books: Gods, Kings, and Other Heroes Indiana University Press
Patil, Amruta (2008) Kari HarperCollins Publishers India
Patil, Amruta (2012) Adi Parva – Churning of the Ocean HarperCollins Publishers India