Graphic Narratives and the Mythological Imagination in India

Roma Chatterji

• Publisher: Routledge India
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9780367272869
• eBook ISBN: 9781000736977
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Art General
• Index: Literature

This book explores graphic narratives and comics in India and demonstrates how these forms serve as sites on which myths are enacted and recast. It uses the case studies of a comics version of the Mahabharata War, a folk artist's rendition of a comic book story, and a commercial project to re-imagine two of India's most famous epics – the Ramayana and the Mahabharata – as science fiction and superhero tales.

It discusses comic books and self-published graphic novels; bardic performance aided with painted scrolls and commercial superhero comics; myths, folklore, and science fiction; and different pictorial styles and genres of graphic narration and storytelling. It also examines the actual process of the creation of comics besides discussions with artists on the tools and location of the comics medium as well as the method and impact of translation and crossover genres in such narratives.

With its clear, lucid style and rich illustrations, the book will be useful to scholars and researchers of sociology, anthropology, visual culture and media, and South Asian studies, as well as those working on art history, religion, popular culture, graphic novels, art and design, folk culture, literature, and performing arts.

1
Mythological revisionings

Sita fills the sky, a woman clothed with the Sun. I watch as she descends through the atmosphere, bringing the light of day to the night sky to prove to the world her ordeal by fire.

Agni Pariksha¹

In Sita’s Descent, a short story by Indrapramit Das (2012), Sita is an artificial nebula sheathed in the fire of the sun that is in imminent danger of colliding with Earth. Along with two other such constructs, Rama and Ravana, she is a creation of the Indian government, which in an attempt to display its scientific and technological prowess to the world has created a cosmic drama based on the Ramayana. It is only when the nebula becomes aware of its identity as Sita that it changes its trajectory, affirming its role as a preserver of life and not a destroyer, and chooses to exile itself in space in the hope that it will meet species who are more appreciative of the goddess Sita’s benevolence. In another story, The Other Woman by Manjula Padmanabhan (2012) in the same science fiction anthology, Mandodari comes down to Earth to remind us, via cable television, that the protagonists of the Ramayana are creatures of myth who have nothing to do with earthly battles over birthplaces.² As immortals they can neither die, nor are they born, and their stories are repeated again and again in mythic time.

All the stories mentioned previously use the time-travel motif as a metanarrative device to align the time of the story with the reader’s own sense of temporality – a sense of a present future in which the “what if” mode of the science fiction genre becomes a space for imaginatively exploring contemporary concerns (Wittenberg 2013). However, the palimpsestic nature of mythical stories already assumes a layering and juxtaposition of different chronicities as the idea of multiple re-tellings, across time and space, is built into the very structure of such narratives. Some contemporary authors use the chiranjeevi, the immortal, as a sutradhar or storyteller to cast light on particular aspects of these ancient tales. The two divine sages Narada and Vyasa are the sutradhars mentioned in some of the re-imaginings of the Mahabharata discussed in Chapters 2 and 4. Hanuman, the vanara (monkey) warrior and Rama devotee, is the sutradhar of a graphic retelling of certain portions of the Ramayana and Mahabharata by Vikram Balagopal (2014); the river Ganga and the cursed protagonist from the Mahabharata, Ashvatthama, are the sutradhars in two illuminated picture books by Amruta Patil (Patil 2012, 2016). In such cases the problem of “presentness” – the question of a past that is to be reconstituted within the present – becomes a “literal topos” narrated as an eyewitness account enabling an “authentic” re-telling which may be different from the dominant narrative (Wittenberg 2013:14).

In many of these stories the motif of play is used as a theme, framing the events so that they appear as traces of a remote past, dismembered from their temporal context to appear in a present that is ours. Discussing the relationship between play and ritual, the philosopher Giorgio Agamben paraphrases Emile Benveniste to say that play transforms the realm of the sacred so that it becomes a “topsy-turvey sacred” (1993: 78). If rituals function to collapse the difference between the mythic past and our present, then play, transforming mythic events into hierophanies, does the opposite by breaking the connection between past and present and disaggregates the synchronic structures of ritual into discrete events (Agamben 1993: 83; Cantlie 2003: 836).

In this volume we examine graphic stories that use temporal dislocation as a device to reframe the epics in novel ways. The efficacy of the comics medium in re-narrativizing Indian mythology has been amply demonstrated through the success of commercial imprints such as Amar Chitra Katha (Immortal Picture Stories) and Campfire comics. However, in these publications attempts at contemporization tend to be limited to the rationalization of discordant elements in the myths that may seem incongruous to our modernist temperament (McLain 2009). The comics that we examine tend to be more “irreverent” in their interpretations of the epics using the trope of fantasy to recast the epics as adventure stories with a cliffhanger structure (Wandtke 2012).

One of the ways in which commercial comics sustain contemporary relevance is through the technique of “retcon” (retroactive continuity) – that is, by re-writing the “continuity” or history of long-running characters to retain their commercial viability. The comics discussed here do the same with the epics. The Ramayana and Mahabharata have been subject to re-visioning for centuries as they are adapted to different types of narrative and performative genres. The comic book re-tellings continue this tradition, requiring not just prior knowledge of the narrative universe but also a willingness to suspend this knowledge and participate in the act of re-visioning.

Comics and pictorial storytelling in India

Comics in India have come a long way from their early beginnings as strip cartoons in newspaper supplements to become an autonomous medium able to experiment not only with thematic content but pictorial vocabulary as well. India has a flourishing industry in commercial comics that not only adapt well-known stories but also produce new characters inspired by vernacular culture around which specific narrative genres have developed.

India also has a subculture of alternative comics with creators who are experimenting with different kinds of pictorial styles. The range is vast – spanning the dominant American style of superhero comics and adaptations of Japanese manga on the one hand to various indigenous painting styles on the other. Tara Books and Navayana are two publishers who have been at the forefront of such experimentations using folk styles to tell stories culled from genres as diverse as history, didactic reformist tracts, autobiography, and fairy tales. Since most folk-art forms have developed in ritual contexts, they tend to give a sacred aura even to supposedly realistic narratives. Thus in one of Tara Books’s cross-over projects the retelling of the life story of Martin Luther King by a traditional picture storyteller from Bengal gives the historical events in King’s life a folkloric aura (Flowers et al. 2010). In another of their projects in which a folk artist was asked to re-imagine Carlo Collodi’s classic children’s story, Pinocchio, not only did the artist use familiar figures from Indian mythology to bring the Italian story closer to home, such as modeling Pinocchio on the figure of the baby Krishna, but she also used traditional aesthetic devices such as frontality to create a face-to-face, two-way exchange between the viewer and the viewed – a feature that is normally associated with religious icons (Collodi and Chitrakar 2014).³ Swarna Chitrakar, the artist, was so inspired by the fact that narrative voices could actually be contained in the pictorial medium of comics that she incorporated the speech balloon as a figural motif in a scroll painting of the story. In the first frame of her scroll, the tree that will eventually provide the wood for the puppet Pinocchio is already animated by the addition of two wide, staring eyes, brimming with tears, looking out at the viewers in an act of direct visual communication that Diana Eck (1986) associates with sacred icons (see Figure 1.1). Further down in the depiction of an event that initiates Pinocchio’s adventures as a delinquent, i.e., when he kills the talking cricket, Chitraker shows the cricket’s life blood seeping out of its mouth in the form of an elongated, red speech balloon covered in symmetrical rows of black lines as if to suggest that its words were oozing out of its body along with its life (see Plate 1). The speech balloon as an iconographic element in comics seems to hold a particular fascination for folk artists, perhaps because of its synesthetic potential, bringing an aural dimension into the visual text, a subject discussed in Chapter 5. In the Bhimayana: Experiences of Untouchability, a comic re-telling of Bhim Rao Ambedkar’s life, the Pardhan-Gond artists Durga and Subhash Vyam use bird and insect silhouettes to connote auditory aspects of speech. Thus the outline of a dove is used for words uttered in a soft voice and a scorpion’s tail for harsh, hurtful speech.⁴ The transformation of the semantically neutral shape of the speech balloon into a meaningful form transforms utterances into metaphors that speak of the tension between different discourses on caste – the subalterns, the victims of the caste system who accept the system and naturalize it through their seemingly innocent speech, and those like Ambedkar who seek to problematize the system – whose words carry a sting like the sharp sting on the scorpion’s tail (Natarajan et al. 2011).

Figure 1.1The Pinocchio Scroll, 1st Frame. Artist: Swarna Chitrakar, 2009.

Source: Author’s Collection.

Commercial Indian superhero comics may at first sight seem to follow conventional Western art styles to portray their characters, but closer attention to panel arrangement on the comics page reveals an emphasis on “aspect-to aspect” transitions between panels where the eye of the reader is expected to roam across the comics page, surveying a scene from multiple perspectives, absorbing details that may not be directly relevant for the situation being portrayed. In his influential book Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art, Scott McCloud (1993) says that panel arrangements of this type are a characteristic feature of Japanese manga comics and are found very rarely in comics in the West, where “action-to-action” and “subject-to-subject” panel transitions may be the norm emphasizing the focused, “goal oriented” culture expressed in the latter (ibid. 81). According to McCloud, manga reflects a narrative orientation that works with cyclical time characteristic of Eastern literary traditions. Speaking from the vantage point of a different narrative medium, the avant-garde film maker Kumar Shahani has termed this the “epic mode” ( Jayamane 2015: 9). Using the parable of the archery contest in the Mahabharata where the young prince Yudhishtira is about to compete with his siblings, Shahani describes Yudhishtira’s inability to shoot at the bull’s eye as an example of the epic vision – of the eye that roams across the totality of a scene taking in details that disallow the kind of focused attention necessary to become a successful archer.

The superhero stories discussed in Chapter 4 all use a de-centered approach, taking advantage of the serial format to open up multiple pathways in the story very much like the bards in the oral tradition who stitch together tales of epic proportions from narrative fragments. Terrance Wandtke (2012) has argued that superhero comics form a distinctive genre that is best understood within the perspective of oral literature since these comics pass through multiple creators and consist of complex layers of myths, folktales, and epic sagas that have an affinity with the oral repertoires of traditional bards. The evolution of extended story arcs, multi-part narratives, and serialization echoes the narrative rhythm of epic sagas, resonating with the pluri-centred character of the epics. In serialized comics, narratives are not arranged in a hierarchical order oriented towards a focal point. Instead they consist of open-ended episodes that form a metonymic series. Nagayana, a superhero series discussed in Chapters 4 and 5, also exhibits this kind of metonymic relationality with its chief protagonist appearing as an assemblage of qualities culled from different narrative sources.⁵ Thus, Nagraj (Serpent King), the hero of the series, has a body that is composed of myriad microscopic serpents that lend him their diverse powers (shakti), but each one of them is also a distinct personality that has the power to emerge from his body and take on anthropomorphic form. Unlike the shape-shifting snakes that inhabit his body, Nagraj is fully human but has been transformed by the poison (halahala) that he was forced to ingest when still a fetus in his mother’s womb – the poison causing his white blood cells to mutate into snakes. Nagraj’s world is shaped by the metonymic connections forged between the snakes, their venom, and Nagraj’s physical form. He has poison breath and a serpent’s scaly skin but like the archetypal superhero is attractive to women. Like his Western counterparts he is valorous and noble, but his generosity and protectiveness towards humans are most likely inspired by India’s serpent lore and his celibacy by her hero myths (Gill 1986).

The Nagraj story arc that we explore in Chapter 4 is inspired by the Ramayana and conforms loosely to its overarching plot without engaging the spiritual aspects of the epic. However, like its source text it seeks to connect the disparate registers of the natural, the social, and the cosmic without necessarily arranging them in a hierarchical order (Danielou 2017). Instead the story reveals an expansive universe in which all things are connected through bonds of affinity and similitude (Silverman 2009). In Chilka and Mice Will Be Mice, stories discussed in Chapters 2 and 3, these ideas are explored through the stylistic choices made by the artist, Shohei Emura. He uses variable panel shapes to reflect the moods of his characters and the affects generated by the empanelled scenes so that style itself becomes a potentiality that enables certain narrative choices to be made.

Intertextuality and the language of Indian comics

The characters of all the comics discussed in this volume have back histories that establish inter-textual relations with folktales, myths, and epics. But the particular visual styles in which these characters are imagined also have an afterlife. Thus, on the surface, Nagraj looks like a typical American superhero dressed in a skin-tight suit with boots and briefs that are worn over his pants. It is only through his back story that we learn that what appears as a tight-fitting green body suit is actually reptilian skin and the coif of hair on his head is shaped like a serpent’s hood but also echoes the sacred ushnisha that crowns the head of the Buddha icon and is a mark of his spiritual enlightenment (see Figure 1.2). The image of the Indian superhero is hybrid, composed of multiple narrative elements that reflect diverse iconological influences. The Nagayana story arc adds another layer to this hybrid image. Since the Nagraj of this series is layered over the persona of Rama, his image also carries some of the visual symbols that we associate with contemporary politicized representations of the warrior hero such as a bow and a quiver full of arrows strung across his shoulders, his muscular upper body draped in a flowing shawl (angavastra) – attributes that are absent from the Nagraj image found in other stories associated with this character (see Plate 2).⁶

The serialized architecture of the comics page on which panels are arranged in sequence is particularly suited to the interlacing of different temporalities and is used in the Nagayana to juxtapose a back story set in Treta yuga (the second age in the cosmic cycle) in the time of Rama and Ravana with the story’s present. Anupam Sinha, the creative director of the series, uses the idea of cyclical time to bring the events of the Ramayana into his story. But unlike the mythic events of the Ramayana that stand outside time and emerge in our present through ritual repetition, for the purposes of the Nagayana they become part of its background history. Thus the opening pages of the story show a historian talking about a comet that is about to hit the planet Earth, comparing it to the comet that collided with the planet in the Treta yuga and unleashed chaos through the birth of Ravana and the actions of his demonic hordes – events chronicled in “historical” documents called puranas (see Figure 1.3). Mythic time takes on a different form of representation in 18 Days, a re-telling of the Mahabharata in the science fiction mode that is discussed in Chapter 4. The immortal (chiranjeevi) sage Markandeya is depicted as a supercomputer with a powerful memory bank in which events that took place in all the previous yugas (ages) are archived. For Grant Morrison, the writer, cyc...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of figures
• List of plates
• Note on transliteration
• Preface
• 1 Mythological revisionings
• 2 Comic gags and the Mahabharata War
• 3 From comic book to folk performance
• 4 Myths, science fiction, and Indian superheroes
• 5 Words and images: The craft of comics narration
• References
• Index