Graphic tales: Lobo Aunty’s kitchen and other stories

Sekhar Mukherjee, a Kolkatan, landed in Ahmedabad in 1992 to study at the National Institute of Design (NID). A chance trip to the Walled City with his seniors introduced him to the magical realm of Maria Lobo at La Bella Restaurant in Mirzapur, which served traditional Goan dishes.
“As a foodie, it was an oasis in the city with the dishes on offer and the affordability of the fare.No wonder, it was flocked by non-Gujarati students like me to have their
fix. Memory of that aroma, taste and above all Lobo aunty is etched in the minds of many regulars like me,” recounts Mukherjee, now a senior faculty member of communication design at NID.
Thus, when he had to choose one of his works for ‘Longform Volume 1,’ an anthology of graphic narratives, he chose to fictionalize the account of Lobo aunty and tell the story of how food culture forms the heritage of a city like Ahmedabad.
In Mukherjee’s rendition of a ‘graphic fairy tale,’ the Goan culinary expert’s life comes alive as the readers get a glimpse of her life before coming to Ahmedabad where she breaks the societal norms and charts a new course for life with her magical vindaloo and cutlets.
“I am also a character in the story, as my younger self enamoured by her dishes and caramel custard. The graphic panels talk about the challenges she faced from different quarters and how she stood up to them. Thus, the penultimate panel shows her as larger than life, like Ma Durga, taking the opposition head-on,” says Mukherjee.
It’s the idea of the anthology, edited by Mukherjee, Sarbajit Sen, Debkumar Mitra and Pinaki De, to give voices to such personal narratives. Mitra, having a day job as a mathematician and researcher, was at NID for a talk on the anthology. He said that the four of them – all from Kolkata and comics aficionados – came together to create a platform that explores the space between Amar Chitra Katha on one end of the spectrum to graphic novels on the other.
“The name itself (Longform) is taken from a statement by comic journalist Joe Sacco where he comments on how the editors are not interested in longform graphic narratives. We want to encourage the detailed and welltold narrative through the exercise of compiling an anthology which will now be an annual affair,” says Mitra.
The book has 30 contributors from India, South Korea, Iran, France, Bhutan and Germany to name a few. The themes also tackle issues such as gender identity, Dalit oppression, mechanization of humans, local lore, environmental concerns, child exploitation, science fiction and nostalgia. The editors are upbeat about future of the medium.
Mitra says that this year for the first time the longlist of Man Booker Prize includes a graphic novel.
“It has been our effort to establish identity of comics not just as a medium for superhero stories. One can find initiatives such as Thimphu Comics in Bhutan to share ancient lore whereas animators like Heeseon Kim from South Korea choose it to talk about Koreas’ border conflict,” says Mukherjee.