He describes the writers’ block as creative constipation, has grown up reading Tintin comics and, with his third graphic novel, The Harappa Files, Sarnath Banerjee feels he has “opened new forms” in this genre.
“My third book is more like an illustrated text. It opens up the form of graphic novels using design in an imaginative way. I am imploding the form, I am working with it all the time, constantly playing with it,” a spirited Banerjee said.
Clad in maroon pants, brown half-sleeve shirt and black coat with intentionally mismatched green socks, which he proudly shows off at the drop of a hat, Banerjee makes sure he turns many heads at the Jaipur Literature Festival. His enviable socialising skills were on display as he enthusiastically shook hands every 30 seconds and broke into an embrace every 50. “I love people. I have an enormous capacity for people. I love socialising and picking up gossip. I am not those silent writer types, I write in a very social sort of way,” said a very pleased with himself Banerjee.
“Just put two people together and the stories will come out. They might be looking all nice and happy and smiling, but deep inside they might be waiting to just stab each other. Just a tiny bit of imagination and you’ve got a story.” His first novel Corridor (2004), an awfully clever and enjoyable read, established him as an intelligent writer.
His work is most definitely adult, bordering on the lines of porn, plus the humour and minus the explicit details. The 38-year-old says he takes inspiration from people around him.
“Most of the characters in my book are people I know. It’s a combination of different bobs, bits and pieces of people I have known, or I imagine I have known. It’s like vaguely remembered phantom memories of a person which comes out very clearly etched sometime,” he said, tousling his already dishevelled curly hair.
Banerjee, who studied image and communication at Goldsmiths College, University of London, says writing is far more easier than drawing.
“Writing comes easy... People are much more adept at writing since they are exposed to it as a kid. I write with my drawing also, I use writing and drawing interchangeably. But the mota (broad) answer is, yes, writing is far easier than drawing.
“For example, if I have to say one apologetic evening in Nehru Place, likhne wale ka kya hai, likh dia. But if I have to draw one apologetic evening, I have to use my entire resources, my entire library of imagination to get to the point,” he said while waving to a woman friend at a distance.
Ask him if he gets writers’ block or a vision block and he thinks for the longest time, he raises his finger as though in a stroke of enlightenment and then shakes his head, dismissing his thoughts.
“I don’t know, it’s a very difficult question. There are periods when you have a sort of creative constipation and you think you are going to produce but you are not able to produce and what you produce is a lot of rubbish. The thing is hath chalni chahiye, you should keep a lot of work happening. I am constantly feeling threatened by this constipation,” he said contemplatively while randomly breaking into Hindi words. He describes his readers as “slightly advanced level readers” and believes the market for graphic novels is growing a bit too fast because of which the quality is suffering.
“It’s just growing in terms of distribution and numbers. Everybody wants to do graphic novels, every kid coming out of school wants to do a graphic novel. It’s very nice and exciting but fundamentally the quality is important,” he said. He has dedicated his new book, The Harappa Files to anyone who is “a mother of two”. The cover has a feisty woman with her two boys, who are dressed in judo dresses.
When asked which comic did he consume while growing up, Banerjee immediately blurted out Tintin.
“Tintin is like Wren & Martin. I have grown up on it. Every Bengali boy thinks Tintin is Bengali since it’s translated in the language. And there are some other... Some obscure Bengali comics,” he said with an infectious laugh.