India, on a miniature scale

Architect Gautam Bhatia has used Rajasthani miniature paintings to illustrate his just-released graphic novel Lie: A Traditional Tale of Modern India. Excerpts from an exclusive interview:

Flip through the pages of Lie: A Traditional Tale of Modern India and you’ll see hundreds of colourful drawings. But this graphic novel, written by architect-author Gautam Bhatia and drawn by miniaturists from Rajasthan, is a relentlessly dark and hard-hitting work that lampoons the unsavoury aspects of contemporary Indian life, including the class divide and the apathy of politicians. Bhatia discusses the book in an interview:

In addition to being an architect, you’re an acerbic social commenter and a prolific writer. How do you find the time to juggle these disciplines?
Writing for me was an activity that grew out of architecture. Seeing how some clients had strange fetishes and dreams – demanding baroque villas and Venetian mansions in south Delhi’s Greater Kailash, for example – it was much easier to write about architecture than build it!

Time is always available. Buildings go on forever, people run out of money during construction, or projects don’t get approved because the building agency has not received the bribe. Anyway, most of my writing is a reflection on the visible state of things. It can be done at bus stops and railway stations.


Tell us about the genesis of Lie. Did you conceptualise and write the narrative first, and subsequently work with the artists?
Lie was initially an unwieldy 600-page book called An Indian Story. It was written for the project Desh Ki Awaaz, an arts collaboration between traditional, popular and graphic artists. I was the odd man architect in the group. This bigger story weaved together elements and themes from contemporary life, including politics, film, religion, cricket and family life.

By using subjects to which everyone could relate, the idea was to explore the moral and social dilemmas that dominate Indian life – corruption, dowry, dysfunctional families, gender inequality, caste prejudice, communalism and other areas of conflict. Real and fictitious characters – ministers, movie stars, bureaucrats, underworld dons, migrant workers, child labourers, government teachers, cricket players, business executives and a range of other personalities – moved in and out of the story. Lie was the shortened version of An Indian Story.

Full interview here Hindu

REVIEW: Lie

REVIEW

Lie: A Traditional Tale of Modern India
Gautam Bhatia
Tranquebar
Rs. 395
Pp 401
ISBN: 9380283739
Paperback

Blurb
The graphic novel looks at issues, personalities, people and ideas that project the popularly-held view of the country. Its characters interact with each other in a way that gives vent to a range of popular and suppressed prejudices-desires, taboos and age-old injustices - that dog the life of every Indian. A sardonic look at the current state of affairs in the country, using a traditional form of expression, Lie has been drawn by miniaturists from Rajasthan.

Through a glass, very darkly Hindu
From the palette of sombre colours used in the illustrations to the black humour running all through, Gautam Bhatia's graphic novel Lie: A Traditional Tale of Modern India is, at every level, a very dark piece of work.

A broad picture-book narrative that is part-soap opera and part-family melodrama, the self-proclaimed critic and satirist explores every nook and cranny of society, laying bare the flaws with brutal honesty. Thus, Bhola the protagonist, flawed in every conceivable manner morally, takes to politics and the apathy, corruption and wily mechanism of the bureaucracy is revealed in a manner that is as entertaining as it is disturbing.

At the other end of the spectrum is the impoverished and ideology-driven farmer Alibaba who chooses to walk the Gandhian path of uprightness and justice. Mid-spectrum is the sex-worker turned prime minister, Rekha.
=$=$=$=$=$=
True copy Timeout Mumbai
More than a decade ago, architect Gautam Bhatia skewered the icing-cake aesthetic favoured by India’s nouveau riches in his brilliant Punjabi Baroque, which cast a jaundiced eye over the home designs of the newly affluent. His latest book, Lie, is a graphic novel drawn in collaboration with three Rajasthani miniature artists. The visuals are colourful, but the narrative is a darkly humourous sketch of Indian life. In an email interview with Naresh Fernandes, Bhatia said India evokes laughter as a form of relief, “like people who laugh in a perilous roller coaster ride when they are at their most fearful”. 

Lie is an angry book. What motivated it?
I live with this fear that I’ll wake up one morning and India would be gone. Just vanished! As if in the middle of the night someone just removed it from the map, and I’m waking up in Europe or America where everything is ordinary and normal. India is great rallying point, a dark smudge of a place that keeps people like me afloat, provides all the hate and love, and fear and prejudice, and despair and joy that makes life worth living. Everyday provides such an intense dose of ugliness, such noisy cries of despair, or moments of such real pleasure that you are left reeling. India is the motivation. Anger is also a strong motivational force in a farce. It makes you see things as so bleak and desperate that the only recourse is laughter.
=$=$=$=$=$=
True lies. The great India story Financial Express
Good ultimately triumphs over evil. But what if it doesn’t, or has co-opted the majority along the way? In an age where the virtues of positive thinking and ignoring any signs to the contrary are almost the only option, here is an alternate view. Lie: A Traditional Tale of Modern India is as bleak as they come. It’s a parable of a land that has lost its way, of its citizens who are trapped in a system with escape routes cut off.

Lie is also different. To start with, it is a graphic novel, a genre in which dark is usually associated with forces of the night with superhuman powers rather than politically loaded tales of cynicism or despair. Its graphic artistes are not some young dudes doing their cool stuff, but three traditional miniaturists from Rajasthan—Shankar Lal Bhopa, Birju Lal and Ghansham. “They were the only ones who agreed to illustrate what we wanted instead of the usual images they do,” says Gautam Bhatia. The miniature form was chosen, explains Bhatia, as it can cram considerable amounts of information in small spaces and what is unsaid in words could come through as “there is no space for silence in the visual medium”. The book, in fact, started by being part of a larger project called Desh Ki Awaz and the plan was for a 600-page An Indian Story but was finally whittled down the present 180 pages. The book went through several stages as each illustration had to be discussed, not an easy project. The result is a traditional looking vividly coloured manuscript with the colours of Rajasthan seeping in.
=$=$=$=$=$=

Graphic novel, miniature style

Filled with rich visual imagery in miniature art style, Bihar is a tale of rise, fall and redemption in architect-writer Gautam Bhatia's new graphic novel, Lie: A Traditional Tale of Modern India.

'If good politics is about governance, how can a minister inaugurate a speedbreaker when people do not have enough food? Or a conference on drought degenerate into a debate over wines among the delegates?' Bhatia told IANS in an informal chat, explaining the context of the book. 'We live a pack of lies in our daily lives,' said the self-depreciating architect, who is 'now busy designing two ugly buildings in the capital'.

Bhatia conceived the illustrations, which have been executed by miniaturists Shankar Lal Bhopa, Birju Lal and Ghansham, modelled on 17th and 18th century Rajasthani miniature paintings. 'I wanted the figures on a flat two-dimensional plane where everyone looked very strong and bold. It is part of the Indian miniature tradition. I had to learn to work with the style in which the colours appeared shorter. It was difficult,' Bhatia said.

He is known for his funny and satirical stories woven around architecture. His latest book developed from a graphic art project on contemporary Indian social realities, Desh Ki Awaaz, supported by the Ford Foundation, two years ago. 

Full report here Sify