From the mud pits

Wrestling is a sport I've gotten interested in and have been following for over a year now. I wrote two longer essays around wrestlers, especially in north India. The first was about how the sport has evolved and is riding a new wave public attention, and the second was about girls and sport, with some interviews with female wrestling champions.


The reason I'm so interesting in wrestling in particular is that it seems to me to represent the growth and evolution of humanity itself. It is one of the oldest sports and has existed in one form or another in all ancient civilizations, including the Greeks, the Persians and of course, Indian. Here's a brief comic I wrote about it, published in the Mint (Jan 28, 2017):

http://www.livemint.com/Sundayapp/OHScm12hb9h0aItl4MNcHL/From-the-pit.html

How we are powered

I've often wondered how we've managed to avoid thinking about power supply. I mean, electricity. As consumers, we like to buy everything we need, so we are not dependent on others and so that our lives and lifestyles are not so easily compromised. Yet, we are so reluctant to actually start owning and producing our own power, and embracing the freedom that that offers. So I wrote this short comic for Mint (June 11, 2016): http://mintonsunday.livemint.com/news/power/1.0.4019103157.html

Law abiding citizens

It is curious, this idea of who is a law-abiding person and who isn't. There is a crush of voices around me talking about how 'we' are law-abiding and how 'these people' don't follow the rules. The more interesting question is, which set of rules? It got me to write this comic for the Mint (May 7, 2016).

Do read it here: http://mintonsunday.livemint.com/news/law-abiding-citizens/1.0.2544916186.html

Clothes, clothes, clothes

Are you one of those people who has too many fancy clothes, and yet, never enough? Do you struggle to keep track of which outfit you wore at which wedding or party, and what set of people have seen you wear it already?

I did a short comic about this peculiar problem. Read/See in the Mint (April 1, 2016):  http://mintonsunday.livemint.com/news/unwearables/2.5.445315043.html

Remembrance

I wrote this short comic about how to deal with the loss of friends made in a virtual age, when social media delivers so much of our friendship and our news to us. Published in the Mint (Jan 3, 2016):

http://mintonsunday.livemint.com/news/remembrance/2.4.3345794741.html

A brush with Radio with Pictures

One of the more interesting things I did in 2015 was adapting a graphic short story for Radio with Pictures. They do a combination of animated artwork, sound design and radio - which is basically good, old-fashioned oral storytelling with some sound effects. I had Mandy Ord as a collaborator and it has been a lovely, lovely process, as well as the start of a new friendship.

It all began, of course, with the wonderful anthology of speculative feminist fiction for young adults: 'Eat the Sky, Drink the Ocean'. It was an Indo-Oz collaboration by Zubaan Books and Allen & Unwin Books, edited by Anita Roy, Kirsty Murray and Payal Dhar. It has taught me to think and work in new ways and I am grateful for the chance to stretch my own abilities. 

Listen, watch and (hopefully) enjoy it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VXUnfwKIg_Q&feature=youtu.be&list=PLUwg3fPxd6AL6rBtD7vtVdMB6gc5cR3T-

Space

Take this man, crushed cane in the city's slick machinery. Published in the Mint (Oct 24, 2015):

Read the whole comic here: http://mintonsunday.livemint.com/news/space/2.4.1779521176.html

Why Writers Return Awards

So, this is the second question to ask - why care what a writer says or does?

We care because writers give to a people their voice, their memory, and multiple layers of truth. Even if we do not see our exact selves mirrored in a book or a poem, we still find a part of our collective self. Writers show us a secret tunnel into the lives and minds of people we do not agree with. They incite passion and compassion, debates and dreams, and all the warnings we need. They consider fresh possibilities. They help us confront our fears, failures, shame, pleasure, and the ways in which we have been damaged. They are a nation's conversation with itself.


From a piece published here.

http://www.dailyo.in/arts/sahitya-kala-akademi-nayantara-sahgal-ashok-vajpeyi-sarah-joseph-dadri-lynching-mm-kalburgi-murder-george-orwell-mahasweta-devi/story/1/6715.html

Port-Able?

Another graphic piece on what it means that state transport buses don't come right up to the departure gates at airports and even railway stations. Publihsed in the Mint (Sept 20, 2015):

http://mintonsunday.livemint.com/news/port-able/2.4.948020578.html

And what if you could fly?

Haven't you wished you could escape the road traffic jams and commute in the sky instead? Do you anticipate being stuck in a 'sky jam'?

Here's a new comic I wrote for The Big Picture in Mint  ('Sky Jam', 27th June 2015): 

and what if plants had the power of speech?

I've often thought about what everyday life might be like if plants could talk to us? This comic with some beautiful art by Vartika is the result of that pondering:
http://mintonsunday.livemint.com/news/speaking-trees/2.3.3057681950.html

Honestly speaking

Have you never wondered what exactly goes into your food, and where it comes from, and what it does to you? What if your food actually gave you all the facts about itself?

Here's me doing some dreaming:
http://mintonsunday.livemint.com/news/honest-food/2.3.2758995882.html

In a new anthology

I have a new graphic short story in this great new anthology of feminist speculative fiction Eat the Sky, Drink the Ocean. It is targeted at young adults, but can be enjoyed by all. 

My story was extracted in Scroll: 
http://scroll.in/article/695911/A-new-graphic-novel-reimagines-the-story-of-Anarkali-as-an-anthem-for-freedom


The reviews for the book are great too! 

'A Cross-Continental Flight of Fancy', by Maegan Dobson Sippy at New Indian Express

'This Anthology of Short Stories Takes an 'Alternative' Approach to Women Empowerment' by Debesh Banerjee, at Indian Express

'Eat the Sky, Drink the Ocean: Feminine Tales of Unity' by Nuvena Rajendran, at Deccan Chronicle

'An Anthology Dripping with Collaborative Alchemy', by Aditya Mani Jha at Sunday Guardian

'For the Girls Who Mess With Boundaries' by Kareena Gianani, at Mid-Day 

'It's a Woman's World' by Karan Bhardwaj, Daily Pioneer

Press Trust of India, at NDTV and at Economic Times

'High As the Sky, Deep As the Ocean' by Sravasti Datta, at The Hindu

'Book Review: Eat the Sky, Drink the Ocean ' by Bijal Vachharajan, at LiveMint

An Impractical Education

This is the latest comic I wrote for the Mint.

I have been thinking for a while now about the inadequacy of our secondary and senior secondary school syllabi. As far as I can see, the syllabus informs teenagers about fairly complex natural, physical and chemical phenomena, formulae for equations and trignometric calculations that most of them will never use in their daily lives. But it leaves them totally unprepared for life.

The average school student is illiterate when it comes to survival skills, especially in urban areas where they do not have any opportunity to learn through direct observation.

The choice of studying Science, Arts, or Commerce is a significant life decision if we assume that this choice is to have a real bearing on how we live our lives, or how we can make a living. I took up Science and later, in undergraduate college, 'Arts' (which is really the Humanities and Social Sciences). But the curriculum told me nothing about how to live. All I had was an assortment of facts and formulations, decrees and interpretations. If I had not been lucky enough to have the money for a specialized degree afterwards, I would have floundered. If my family did not support me further, I would have sunk into poverty. At fifteen, I was being prepared for what could eventually be a career in, say, medicine or astronomy or biochemical engineering. But I was totally unprepared for supporting myself in case I did not have the resources or temperament to study towards the aforementioned careers.

A formal school education tells us very little about how to make a living from the land or how to actually - practically - tap into nature's resources. We grow up knowing nothing about sustaining life (or love, which is incredibly sad and goes a long way towards dehumanizing and de-sensitizing the populace). Why is this so?

I am starting to believe that a highly stratified (in India, this means stratified along class and caste lines) society has something to do with it. We take human labour and basic survival skills for granted because we expect someone else to do it for the higher ups, i.e. people who access to formal schooling.

This someone else would be a low-paid mazdoor, some unfortunate born with limited access to white collar schooling. Even if this someone wrangles some schooling out of the system, a secondary school certificate is not likely to lead to a white collar job. The only other way out of poverty would be entrepreneurship, which would mean a small investment of money or material assets. The poorest in India have been rendered landless either by the caste system or modern institutional 'development' leading to displacement. Worse, they often work under conditions that lead to health breakdowns with no compensating insurance or benefits.

The pool of labour might have shrunk, but it exists. And so, the rest of us survive without having any real survival skills. Growing hundreds of food crops, harvesting, cooking, cleaning, growing cotton, rearing silkworms, beekeepers, weaving, sewing, shoe-making, assembling machines, cutting wood, building houses, mining sand and stone, cutting and shaping metal, identifying medicinal herbs. We cannot do any of this.

Skills that define human civilization, skills without which we would not last a day, are denied to us. And we allow it because we see so little value attached to these skills in the current economic system.

I often wonder, what would it be like if we actually began to attach value to our own survival? Would we not be a different sort of India?

Because so much rupaiyya makes us blind

As citizens and voters, we are often stumped by the glaring lack of options. There doesn't seem to be anyone 'good' around. All candidates appear to be either directly corrupt - having been implicated in scams, or their family members named as beneficiaries of their time in office - or else, their politics is inherently corrupt. Their policies benefit a certain small group of people, heaping privilege upon privilege instead of levelling the playing field, and doing little to extend public infrastructure, that is truly public in the sense of being accessible to all. 

Why do they do this? 

As always, the answer is - money. Political campaigns are very big business, and therefore, likely to be pro-big business. The more expensive a campaign is, the more compromised the candidate is, no matter how good his/her intentions. India does not even have a precedent of candidates and political parties revealing the source of 'donors' to election funds. AAP has made a fresh start in this direction. I wish all parties would follow suit. Transparency must begin with political parties.


For voters, the mounting of a 'big' (expensive) campaign is especially problematic because it obscures the candidature of smaller parties or independent men and women. The Election Commission is supposed to monitor how much money is being spent, but there has to be a way for the media to play a more proactive role during elections. It is not enough to discuss the 'chances' of various high-profile candidates. That is not what the fourth pillar of democracy is expected to do. If the media is supposed to 'communicate' information to the voting public, is incumbent upon the media to discuss all candidates - their work, their track record, their manifestos, their background, their allegiances, their politico-cultural agenda - and give each one a fair chance. 

On the subject, a comic I wrote recently for Mint

I attempted to show why the few 'clean' candidates who want to serve as politicians are so invisible. We seem to only hear and see of people after they have spent a lot of money, and this is enabled largely through media. Click on the picture to see a larger image.

Sharing, caring etc

Further musings on toilets and our shared existence as citizens, families, lovers etc. I do firmly believe that the day we all start leaving a public toilet cleaner than we found it, we will have understood the true meaning of patriotism.

I'd also like to say that there is nothing so unromantic as an unclean toilet, and that a nice, airy, really sparkling clean bathroom-toilet is a strong incentive to commit to someone.

The following comic appeared in Mint.

A snatch of music

This is the latest script I did for The Small Picture in Mint. It comes from me missing music in public spaces, and then, chancing upon a few snatches at suburban railway stations last year. Artist Archana Sreenivasan has beautifully captured that sense of grey one experiences in this city, especially at an aural level.

Plural losses

This piece was written for The Small Picture on December 6, in memory of my grandfather, who left so much work unfinished, so much unsaid:

The Madness Around

Have often thought about sanity, the people we consider sane, and the forces that push some of us beyond - into that other place in the head. Some of those thoughts are compressed here, in another story for The Small Picture in Mint.

More than a database of grief

There is a stockpile of shared grief within each of us. It threatens to render the taste of life ash on our tongues. Each riot, every famine, each genocidal attack, racist attack, each horrific moment of hate. The maps of the world, of our place in the world, of our identity are marked by pain. And we go on. That is the thing. Without knowing why we suffered, or how to learn to trust again, we go on.

Survival is an instinct but our individual and social can matter only if we let go of past pain and find fresh reserves of trust, veering more and more and more towards the side of justice. And trying not privilege the grief of one race, one religion, or one gender over the other.

'Ground Zero', was written for The Small Picture which appears in Mint, beautifully illustrated by Prabha Mallya.