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In response to the oft-asked question, “How does one read graphic novels?” my esteemed colleague and author of The Hotel at the End of the World, Parismita Singh said: “Quickly, greedily, racing to the end. And then a slow return: go back to the beginning, savour it, read only the orange and the grey tones, pick up another element to read and so on…”

There cannot be a better illustration of this than Amruta Patil’s Adi Parva. I unpacked the book one snowed in afternoon in my neighbourhood café and within minutes got absorbed in Patil’s skilfully drawn, delicately composed, intricately imagined universe. Carried by the drift of the visuals I turned page after page, racing towards the end, only vaguely aware of a story unfolding in my subconscious. It was in the second reading that the intricacies of a carefully constructed narrative revealed itself to me.
Patil’s Adi Parva, in its complexity and multiple points of view, might come as a surprise to those like me — a generation whose first exposure to Mahabharata happened only through the teleserial on Doordarshan on Sundays after Spiderman. Our first impression of the epic book were bare-chested masculine men with surplus emotions, petite wilful women with yards of exposed midriffs, bored senior family members spouting vengeful homilies, brattish children letting out emphatic cries, scheming uncles, pious plebeians, emaciated soldiers, trumpets, horses and even an Olympian hammer-thrower playing the part of Bheem. These images coupled with snatches of childhood conversations about family members resembling characters from the Mahabharata completed my imagination of the book. The serial made the epic have a distinct north Indian flavour — the characters looked as if they were from Rohtak or Hissar, but then I guess that is where the action took place.
It wasn’t as if Bengal didn’t have a go at the Mahabharata. Kaliprashanna Singha, the eccentric zamindar and flaneur who explored the scandals of 19th-century Calcutta, commissioned the translation of the epic into Bengali. Like a good Bengali he dedicated the project to Queen Victoria. The great Bengali poet Michael Madhusudan Dutta, wrote Meghnad Badh Kavya, published in 1861. But these literary works were too high culture for common people, so we were stuck with the tone set by the serial.
Patil’s Adi Parva takes the cataract off our eyes, and exposes the true interpretive possibility of the great book. The slightly disaffected language she chooses makes the text very powerful. A no-nonsense approach to grand proclamation, an acute eye for the smaller things and a natural style of writing have humanised the epic.
The surrealist journey begins at a ferry-ghat in an undisclosed location, in an unspecified time. The woman storyteller, part-time slacker and full-time goddess, faces a gathering of people waiting for the boat. Some of these men and women are sceptical, some restless, some angry, some kind and attentive and some cynical. There is also a mad man of some signification. Revealing his identity will be an end spoiler.
While the story continues, a woman in the group interrupts the storyteller and shouts out: “…Is there a curse coming up? I sense a curse coming up. People in this tale fly into rage over the slightest thing.”
The book is full of such delicious observations. Indeed, the epic is full of wrathful sages, kings, fathers, mothers, grannies, Brahmans, woodcutters who are fast and loose with their curses and prompt with their boons. It seems as if Patil’s book catches a tendency among a section of the modern Indian middle class, as we have seen in recent times, quick to judge, quick to announce grand punishments and quick to forget. But, perhaps, I am reading too much into it.
Patil has maintained a sharp yet subtle streak of humour throughout the narrative. Her wit has a held-back, sophisticated quality, which I feel is a real achievement. For example, the argument between Vishnu, Brahma and later Shiva, about the authorship of the world is quite funny. The book has a deep philosophical core which, in Patil’s visualisation, acquires a haunting quality. There is a scene in which Vishnu makes a tear on the surface of an ocean with his toes nails. The image has haunted me ever since.
The characters have surprising human qualities and occasionally even gods display great darkness of character. When Garuda complained to Vishnu about how despite being his best discipline, he does not get his due share of affection, Vishnu agreed easily. “You must be right. I will give this some thought. Meanwhile, do me a favour, will you? My little finger is very weary. Allow me to rest it on your back for a few moments.”
The weight of the finger almost crushed Garuda to the ground, making him realise the power of Vishnu. Patil achieves this atmosphere of cold threat in a way that is difficult to achieve in any medium. V.K. Karthika, one of the best editors of graphic novels that I know, has edited the book and has achieved great over-all rhythm and balance. Because of the complicated nature of the epic, two or three times I stumbled through the narrative and wished it could have been told more simply. However I was quick to remind myself that Adi Parva is a major work that, not unlike other good literature, requires multiple reading. I did also find the book to be a little over produced — printers have to experiment with new kinds of papers and design, but the glossy finish of the book makes it look out of sync with the nuanced, understatedness of the narrative.
Although, Amruta Patil builds her nest in the ancient, her work is a modernist triumph. I am very proud that Patil along with other graphic novelist of India like Orijit Sen, Parismita Singh, Amitabh Kumar, Vishwajyoti Ghosh and many others are setting such high standards of excellence. Finally, I think, with this group one can aim at creating a strong local idiom and be less and less concerned about getting Western validation.

Sarnath Banerjee is a well-known graphic novelist, artist and the co-founder of Phantomville, a comics
publishing house