Epic encounters

India’s first woman graphic novelist, Amruta Patil, tells us what happens when mythology ceases to echo the values and aspirations of an epoch.
Her debut graphic novel, Kari, came out in 2008, and immediately created a stir. From the angst-ridden story of a rebellious young lesbian, Amruta Patil has moved a considerable distance in Adi Parva, the first of her Mahabharata-based trilogy.Adi Parva, published simultaneously by Au Diable Vauvert in France and HarperCollins in India, hit bookstores a few weeks back. Patil is already at the drawing board with the second part. The first woman graphic novelist of India, Patil considers herself a storyteller first and an artist later, and gets inspired by “Marjane Satrapi’s ear for dialogue, Dave McKean’s inventiveness and flair when collaborating with Neil Gaiman, Lorenzo Mattoti’s colour and voluptuous forms, and Alison Bechdel’s rigorous writing”. Excerpts from an interview...
How long has Adi Parva been cooking? And what’s with its French connection?
Adi Parva has been on my mind for about 10 years — well before Kari — and I have been working on it full-time for about three and a half years. The connection with France is a special one. It was while on a writer’s residency at La Maison des Auteurs, Angouleme, that I actually started writing and painting my version of the epic.
This novel is the first part of a trilogy. How have you divided the Mahabharata story to fit the three parts?
Adi Parva ferries across the surreal stories of Devlok and Vishnulok via the celestialterrestrial sutradhar, Ganga. The first part ends when the Kauravs and Pandavs are born. The subsequent books take the story through the mortal intrigues, the forest exiles and loves, the battlefield and dissolution. Finally, we are led back to the playing fields and pure palettes — the completion of a circle.
Is this series in any way a reaction to elements you found missing in the telling and retelling of the Mahabharata, especially in recent years?
It was the general distancing of people from its own lore that I found regrettable. This happens when a sutradhar loses the pulse of her audience, when the mythology ceases to echo the values and aspirations of an epoch. Also, there is a growing trend of our epics being appropriated by a certain fundamentalist strata of society — and while they are well within their rights to embrace what they will, it felt important to stake one’s own claim to the wealth, to also make it one’s own and tell it in an alternate voice.
I am reminded here of Satyajit Ray who, just like you, had dreamed of making a film on the dice episode of the Mahabharata. Which episode of the Mahabharata fascinates you the most, and why?
It’s hard to pick favourites. Really. And the more you swim in the lore, the harder it gets. I enjoyed the sequences about Garud, and Amrit. I am intrigued by the exiles, because so little is read into them but the most obvious. The parts when Krishna sparkles in the tale are an obvious joy.
Tell us something about the visual style you have used.
I have tried very hard to be true to the vividness of the worlds, the pure palette and vibrant juxtapositions they demanded. The stories aren’t linear, so I saw no need to impose sameness on the visual treatment. There is an array of styles — collage, charcoal, acrylic painting. Visually, the sutradhar’s segments are separated from the rest of the book by their being rendered in black and white. I see the whole tale as being a lesson in how to play, and that is precisely the quality I have tried to bring to the work.
Kari was a very urban work, charged with sexual politics. It was in black and white. Adi Parva is in the realm of mythology, and it is a riot of colours. How big was the leap?
It was extremely difficult, personally and extremely fulfilling, artistically.
What are the subjects that you find yourself gravitating towards when you are thinking of ideas?
Towards things that make us gentler, more responsible and wakeful people. Which is why gravitating towards mythology was such a no-brainer. So much wisdom, wielded with such lightness of touch.
How do you react to being called ‘India's first female graphic novelist’?
With equanimity. It is happenstance, being the ‘first’ anything. It doesn’t mean much — with a little different timing, that title could have been someone else’s. There are other things I aspire to.
Like what?
Like honing the storytelling to diamond flair. Like learning to work with the land, grow my own food, remain engaged with the planet and coherent, and not get caught up with the trappings that being in the public realm can bring.
Do you feel graphic novel as a genre has managed to carve out an identity in India?
The way things have been in the last few years is very promising — particularly with regard to the array of ambitious subject matter dealt with in non-predictable, original visual ways — but much more work needs to happen before we start thinking of anything akin to a graphic novel ‘scene’ here.