Instagram has become a way for graphic novelists and comic artists to take their work to audiences directly, instead of waiting for publishers to back them. This kind of self-publishing also allows writers to control what they want to say and how they want to say it, especially in a country like India, where literary censorship isn’t as rare as we imagine. Siddesh Gautam, who is known by his Instagram handle @bakeryprasad, is one of them. “Traditionally, I would have had to spend years trying to enter galleries or convince institutions that my work deserved to be seen, devoid of my caste and class location. Instead of asking for permission, I made my own gallery online by sharing my work directly with people.” After years of posting his work, Gautam decided to write his first graphic novel, The Blue Book (published by Penguin Random House India), a personal, non-linear dramatisation of historical figures from the anti-caste movement, which launched on July 21. The artist, designer, writer and Ambedkarite believes that it is a folly to equate graphic novels with ‘light reading’ because they demand labour from the reader. “The space between panels and scenes, the relationship between words and images, the visual metaphors—all leave room for interpretation, ”Gautam explains. “Rather than simply consuming a story, readers actively complete it in their own minds. I think many young people are drawn to that openness, to a form that invites imagination instead of prescribing it.”
When the time came to adapt her play Three Women (published by Penguin Random House India), a reimagination of women from the life and oeuvre of Rabindranath Tagore, into a book, playwright and singer Isheeta Ganguly also chose to go down the graphic novel route. Through illustrations “that communicate grief, ecstasy, fear and joy, much beyond the scope of what only words can,” the eponymous book features the ghost of Kadambari Devi, who leaps across time and finds herself guiding Bimala from The Home and the World and Charu from The Broken Nest as they navigate agency, identity, love, ambition and self-worth.