Published by Parismita Singh, Guwahati, February, 2008, 32 pp.
Price Not Mentioned
There are numerous ways of telling stories with sophisticated use of imagery, text, sound and consistent application of space and time. When one wants to re-tell or give a modern spin to memorable stories, he or she is often caught in a peculiar predicament – of choosing the best available medium to communicate. The massive strides that have taken place in the development of communication media over the years have thrown up immense possibilities of adding visual adjectives to enhance the power of the oral or the textual churned out everyday by the ‘visual society’. And now comic books/graphic novels have become a searing medium not so ‘new’ yet ‘new’ for all kinds of stories that have images and words to tell everything from folktales to epics and from intricate personal stories to narratives of the modern day folks. It is indeed a form that is as limitless as anyone’s fantasy.
When I procured a personal copy of the comic book by Parismita Singh, numerous thoughts crossed my minds. I was told that the story is based on some of the most popular folktales from Assam. Despite the quick verbal introductions given to me by colleagues, I expected much variegated twirls. And for a ‘re-initiated’ comic book enthusiast like me, the little book ‘The Adventure of Tejimola and Sati Beula’ (TATSB) was indeed a gratifying read because of at least four reasons. First, I happened to chance read and saw some of Parismita Singh’s works. One called ‘Like Cleopatra’ and the other an extract from ‘The Floating Island’ one of the five stories in her forthcoming graphic novel tentatively titled ‘The Hotel at the End of the World” by Penguin Books India, New Delhi . And I was expecting a similar kind of work – the sequentiality of distinct yet simple visual narrative that has a beginning and a climax. And TATSB was different. Second, I reaffirmed my conviction about the power of visuals and their limitless possibilities. Third, comic books made for minors or adults can indeed be work of valued literature. Fourth, the possibility of independent comic book production by the comic book artists or the graphic novelists themselves despite financial insecurities of being a comic book artist or a graphic novelist. By the way, TATSB was developed as part of an international artists residency organized by Desire Machine Collective at Khoj, Guwahati and published by the artist herself.
There is however a condition set, not imposed, for a nuanced reading of TATSB . Parismita Singh says anyone who wants to probe the depth of this comic book has to go through the two extra unattached pages that accompany the work. And unlike the introduction or preview to the forthcoming ‘The Hotel at the End of the World’ , this work is not strictly confined to the loosely defined features of current graphic novels. Whether anyone calls it a comic book or a graphic novel, the work is indeed tinged and nuanced. Unlike the great upsurge in children’s comic book production in India in the mid 1970s and 1980s and their ‘unintended’ functional role of substituting grand-parents from their roles as storytellers in urban nuclear families, this comic book is an adult read not by virtue of its explicitness but implicit social and political subtexts. The genre of this work is more akin to literary fiction and not definitely kitsch.
Distinct from Singh’s earlier work ‘Like Cleopatra’, the story of ‘frequent yet hidden’ campus narrative of the youth, TATSB disengages itself from the ‘familiar terrain’. It is a modern spin on the encounter between two Assamese female folktale characters Tejimola and Sati Beula interspersed with significant incidents before Parismita Singh conceptualized the plots. The original Tejimola’s is a tragic tale of how she was murdered by her wicked (step)-mother in the absence of her father. There are variations of the same folktale in other parts of the Northeast as well. Tejimola was ground up in a large wooden mortar using a heavy wooden pestle. Her remains turned into gourd tree when thrown out into the backyard and when the mother realized this, she cut down the plant. It only grew up as the lemon tree. The mother uprooted the lemon tree and threw it into the river but it sprouted into a lotus flower/water lily and later transformed into a sparrow. When her father realized that the bird was her daughter, it finally transformed back into Tejimola. Sati Beula was a widow who set sail down river Brahmaputra with the dead body of her husband. While on sail, she saw a washerwoman on the river bank who takes her own child’s life because it was troubling her and brought it back to life once her work was over. Beula reposed faith in the washerwoman’s power and hoped to bring back her husband back from the dead. It is no surprise that these definitely were not the tales Parismita Singh set out to tell in her comic book.
The comic book begins from where Sati Beula saw the antics of the washerwoman. A mourning Sati Beula finds no luck as she was told that there had been three people killed in an ‘internal’ military operation but the security forces could not establish the identities of the deceased. She loses hope of bringing her husband back to life. And somewhere over the swelling Brahmaputra, a person on a boat sees Tejimola become the prey to a huge crow flying over towards the bank where many other crows were feasting over the garbage dumped down by the very very important unscrupulous residents of the river bank. The crow carrying Tejimola stops mid-air when a group of video artists and photographers asked “Are you from North Guwahati?”, “Are you from Bangladesh?”, “Do you like your mother?”, “Where does this river come from?” When the crow opens its beak and bends its tongue to speak, Tejimola’s body hurls down towards the river. Then, an armed man shoots down Tejimola saying “First Air, now river terrorists, must be Deccan .” Tejimola falls right onto a shipyard where workmen were busy constructing, repairing inland water ships and recycling metal scraps. As Tejimola lands there, she is pounded by the hammers of the workers along with the metals. She now turns to sparks of oil and fire, flying out of the shipyard that fall into the river. The sparks finally settle inside a floating empty packet of chips. Now enters someone who recognizes that these sparks were Tejimola’s battered soul and limbs. Unlike the folktale, it is her mother not father, who recognizes Tejimola while standing on the river bank. She instructs Sati Beula, still sailing at a distance with her dead husband, to pick up the floating chips packet.
Make no mistake! The comic book narrative was not as simple as mentioned above. With liberal splash of contemporary issues that have besieged Assam and multi layered symbolic insertions of the same to familiar folktales, the ingenuity of Parismita Singh lies not only on her ability to sketch but also a seemingly effortless yet sophisticated empathy to these very issues. Once the reader auto-establishes the context, it might seem easier to guess the intention of the work’s creator. This very intent gives her the leverage to even say more in between the texts and the images. Yes, empty spaces do tell stories too in most creative visual arts. Attempting to make a scrutiny of the visual and textual metaphors in TATSB is fraud with the dangers of unraveling an unintended scathing indictment of the state’s response to the turmoil in Assam. Yet, one can still point fingers to the directness of what certain symbols represent in the creator’s mindscape. Take for instance, the mourning Sati Beula, taking her husband’s dead body searching for a secret to revive her husband is, on the one hand, an unmistakable representation of wailing widows whose husbands, sons and fathers and brothers are killed in the state versus non-state political violence. The ever sad and miserable Tejimola, on the other hand, is the metaphor for the unceasing hopes of the common people in Assam. Make any attempt to annihilate her, she will find a way out to sprout back to life and continue living. The sequence of the video artists and the photographers questioning the crow brings out restrained manifestations of identity politics. Mark the texts that include words like ‘North Guwahati’, ‘Bangaldesh’, ‘mother’ and ‘river’. What do they signify? It would be of not much an uphill task for a reader to immediately associate the crow and the crows as the metaphorical ‘signifiers’ of the transnational/cross border migrant population or the political parasites that feed on the produce and the leftovers of the circumscribed natives. Or is one reading too much over just a comic book?
In between the texts and images of the comic book lie numerous real and imaginary human activities along the river Brahmaputra. Just like the river, the narrative of TATSB has its own course. What is apparently disjointed is connected by the very rationale of finding a destination beyond the borders. While acknowledging the contemporary norms of critiquing that a work can be interpreted in multiple ways, Parismita Singh’s 32 page (including cover), TATSB owes its strength only to her dexterous handling of the theme and the unity of her presentation. One will not be disappointed to see multi-hued twists and turns in the multilineal black and white dots and lines and follow Sati Beula and Tejimola’s adventures as they explore the river and the riverside world. Keep sailing Sati Beula and take care of the immortal Tejimola inside the empty chips packet!
When I procured a personal copy of the comic book by Parismita Singh, numerous thoughts crossed my minds. I was told that the story is based on some of the most popular folktales from Assam. Despite the quick verbal introductions given to me by colleagues, I expected much variegated twirls. And for a ‘re-initiated’ comic book enthusiast like me, the little book ‘The Adventure of Tejimola and Sati Beula’ (TATSB) was indeed a gratifying read because of at least four reasons. First, I happened to chance read and saw some of Parismita Singh’s works. One called ‘Like Cleopatra’ and the other an extract from ‘The Floating Island’ one of the five stories in her forthcoming graphic novel tentatively titled ‘The Hotel at the End of the World” by Penguin Books India, New Delhi . And I was expecting a similar kind of work – the sequentiality of distinct yet simple visual narrative that has a beginning and a climax. And TATSB was different. Second, I reaffirmed my conviction about the power of visuals and their limitless possibilities. Third, comic books made for minors or adults can indeed be work of valued literature. Fourth, the possibility of independent comic book production by the comic book artists or the graphic novelists themselves despite financial insecurities of being a comic book artist or a graphic novelist. By the way, TATSB was developed as part of an international artists residency organized by Desire Machine Collective at Khoj, Guwahati and published by the artist herself.
There is however a condition set, not imposed, for a nuanced reading of TATSB . Parismita Singh says anyone who wants to probe the depth of this comic book has to go through the two extra unattached pages that accompany the work. And unlike the introduction or preview to the forthcoming ‘The Hotel at the End of the World’ , this work is not strictly confined to the loosely defined features of current graphic novels. Whether anyone calls it a comic book or a graphic novel, the work is indeed tinged and nuanced. Unlike the great upsurge in children’s comic book production in India in the mid 1970s and 1980s and their ‘unintended’ functional role of substituting grand-parents from their roles as storytellers in urban nuclear families, this comic book is an adult read not by virtue of its explicitness but implicit social and political subtexts. The genre of this work is more akin to literary fiction and not definitely kitsch.
Distinct from Singh’s earlier work ‘Like Cleopatra’, the story of ‘frequent yet hidden’ campus narrative of the youth, TATSB disengages itself from the ‘familiar terrain’. It is a modern spin on the encounter between two Assamese female folktale characters Tejimola and Sati Beula interspersed with significant incidents before Parismita Singh conceptualized the plots. The original Tejimola’s is a tragic tale of how she was murdered by her wicked (step)-mother in the absence of her father. There are variations of the same folktale in other parts of the Northeast as well. Tejimola was ground up in a large wooden mortar using a heavy wooden pestle. Her remains turned into gourd tree when thrown out into the backyard and when the mother realized this, she cut down the plant. It only grew up as the lemon tree. The mother uprooted the lemon tree and threw it into the river but it sprouted into a lotus flower/water lily and later transformed into a sparrow. When her father realized that the bird was her daughter, it finally transformed back into Tejimola. Sati Beula was a widow who set sail down river Brahmaputra with the dead body of her husband. While on sail, she saw a washerwoman on the river bank who takes her own child’s life because it was troubling her and brought it back to life once her work was over. Beula reposed faith in the washerwoman’s power and hoped to bring back her husband back from the dead. It is no surprise that these definitely were not the tales Parismita Singh set out to tell in her comic book.
The comic book begins from where Sati Beula saw the antics of the washerwoman. A mourning Sati Beula finds no luck as she was told that there had been three people killed in an ‘internal’ military operation but the security forces could not establish the identities of the deceased. She loses hope of bringing her husband back to life. And somewhere over the swelling Brahmaputra, a person on a boat sees Tejimola become the prey to a huge crow flying over towards the bank where many other crows were feasting over the garbage dumped down by the very very important unscrupulous residents of the river bank. The crow carrying Tejimola stops mid-air when a group of video artists and photographers asked “Are you from North Guwahati?”, “Are you from Bangladesh?”, “Do you like your mother?”, “Where does this river come from?” When the crow opens its beak and bends its tongue to speak, Tejimola’s body hurls down towards the river. Then, an armed man shoots down Tejimola saying “First Air, now river terrorists, must be Deccan .” Tejimola falls right onto a shipyard where workmen were busy constructing, repairing inland water ships and recycling metal scraps. As Tejimola lands there, she is pounded by the hammers of the workers along with the metals. She now turns to sparks of oil and fire, flying out of the shipyard that fall into the river. The sparks finally settle inside a floating empty packet of chips. Now enters someone who recognizes that these sparks were Tejimola’s battered soul and limbs. Unlike the folktale, it is her mother not father, who recognizes Tejimola while standing on the river bank. She instructs Sati Beula, still sailing at a distance with her dead husband, to pick up the floating chips packet.
Make no mistake! The comic book narrative was not as simple as mentioned above. With liberal splash of contemporary issues that have besieged Assam and multi layered symbolic insertions of the same to familiar folktales, the ingenuity of Parismita Singh lies not only on her ability to sketch but also a seemingly effortless yet sophisticated empathy to these very issues. Once the reader auto-establishes the context, it might seem easier to guess the intention of the work’s creator. This very intent gives her the leverage to even say more in between the texts and the images. Yes, empty spaces do tell stories too in most creative visual arts. Attempting to make a scrutiny of the visual and textual metaphors in TATSB is fraud with the dangers of unraveling an unintended scathing indictment of the state’s response to the turmoil in Assam. Yet, one can still point fingers to the directness of what certain symbols represent in the creator’s mindscape. Take for instance, the mourning Sati Beula, taking her husband’s dead body searching for a secret to revive her husband is, on the one hand, an unmistakable representation of wailing widows whose husbands, sons and fathers and brothers are killed in the state versus non-state political violence. The ever sad and miserable Tejimola, on the other hand, is the metaphor for the unceasing hopes of the common people in Assam. Make any attempt to annihilate her, she will find a way out to sprout back to life and continue living. The sequence of the video artists and the photographers questioning the crow brings out restrained manifestations of identity politics. Mark the texts that include words like ‘North Guwahati’, ‘Bangaldesh’, ‘mother’ and ‘river’. What do they signify? It would be of not much an uphill task for a reader to immediately associate the crow and the crows as the metaphorical ‘signifiers’ of the transnational/cross border migrant population or the political parasites that feed on the produce and the leftovers of the circumscribed natives. Or is one reading too much over just a comic book?
In between the texts and images of the comic book lie numerous real and imaginary human activities along the river Brahmaputra. Just like the river, the narrative of TATSB has its own course. What is apparently disjointed is connected by the very rationale of finding a destination beyond the borders. While acknowledging the contemporary norms of critiquing that a work can be interpreted in multiple ways, Parismita Singh’s 32 page (including cover), TATSB owes its strength only to her dexterous handling of the theme and the unity of her presentation. One will not be disappointed to see multi-hued twists and turns in the multilineal black and white dots and lines and follow Sati Beula and Tejimola’s adventures as they explore the river and the riverside world. Keep sailing Sati Beula and take care of the immortal Tejimola inside the empty chips packet!
**Khorjei Laang wrote a similar review for Biblio: A Review of Books, May-June 2008 Issue
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