GRAPHIC NOVEL
Multi-tasking and mixed media
AJIT DUARA
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Sarnath Banerjee's narration may be abstract but his drawings are quite beautiful.
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The Barn Owl's Wondrous Capers, Sarnath Banerjee, Penguin Books, p.263, Rs. 395.
IF you are looking to Sarnath Banerjee spinning a great yarn in his "graphic novel", The Barn Owl's Wondrous Capers, you will be disappointed. The narrative technique of Mr. Banerjee is somewhat closer to that of Jean Luc Godard than it is to Karan Johar. Which means that the novel has a central ideological thesis but arrives and departs from that focal point with gay abandon.
The word "gay" is applied here in its 18th century usage. There are graphic sex scenes in the book, all of them heterosexual. Much of the novel is set in the 18th century, but some of it in the 20th, a little in the 19th, one scene in the first and the opening of the novel in the 17th — 1601 to be precise. As the author says in the preface — "This book is inspired by history but not limited by it".
London, Paris and Kolkata are the primary scenes of action. The book is about how the narrator, while in London, receives news that his grandfather has expired in Kolkata and left for him an old valve-type radio set, a silver lighter, an antique motorcycle and an 18th century book of scandals called The Barn Owl's Wondrous Capers. But, by the time he arrives at Kolkata to collect his inheritance, his grandmother has given everything away.
The novel is about his search, if it can be said to be about anything in this tangible universe, for the precious book of scandals. This is an original leather bound edition of a work that the author says is invaluable — "Professor Klaus Butterstein (as pro semitic as you can get) of Heidelberg University names (it) among the twenty rarest books that exist. It could fetch at least a hundred thousand pounds in the international market. I could make a career out of it, move from Hackney to Hamstead Heath." With this limited upwardly mobile ambition, the storyteller comes to Kolkata and the tale goes back and forth between centuries, sometimes between millenniums, between cities, between cultures until the reader is so disoriented he could well suffer an attack of intellectual vertigo.
Disorienting
If you have seen Quentin Tarantino's "Pulp Fiction" or Mani Ratnam's "Yuva", you get the picture. Banerjee tells you about a duel between Philip Francis and Warren Hastings at Belvedere Estate, Calcutta, 1780 or thereabouts, then leaves you mid duel to meander into time and space. He goes to London, late 20th or early 21st, Paris, 1950s, tells you about the founding of the city of Calcutta by Jobus Charnok, 18th, and after wandering about the planet a little comes back to the duel at the precise time he left it 200 pages previously. Brilliant. You either applaud or describe this auteur as a pseudo graphic novelist.
If you are inclined to applaud, there is indeed something to applaud about. Mr. Banerjee's narration may be abstract but his drawings are quite beautiful. There is depth to this artist and some of his picturisation is striking. Since Banerjee is clearly a zenophobic Kolkatan, his depiction of that grand but ramshackle city is detailed and loving. Occasionally he combines photography and drawings to wonderful effect. You see colour and black and white photos of trams, yellow ambassador taxis, narrow lanes, claustrophobic architecture and other signature visuals of the city. Juxtaposed, sometimes superimposed, are his drawings.
Lovely rendering
For example, in the narrative, the author is wandering around, guided by his friend Digital Datta, looking for The Barn Owl's Wondrous Capers in every nook and cranny. So you have a photo of a Kolkata bylane and a drawing of a longhaired lover type with a cigarette in his mouth walking down the lane in the photograph. It reminds you a lot of the new film animation techniques — a mixture of documentary and animation. Quite lovely.
Graphic it certainly is, but is the book a novel? Perhaps, if we take a few liberties, expand the scope of T.S. Eliot's "Tradition and the Individual Talent", gloss over tradition, include the use of mixed media by the individual talent and accept the fact that we live in the Internet age where multi-tasking writers are trying to communicate with multi-tasking readers.
Striking visual
Then we can appreciate the most stunning drawing in The Barn Owl's Wondrous Capers. This is a picture of the most holy ritual in Kolkata — shopping for freshly caught Hilsa. As Bengali gourmets will tell you, the finest is Poddar Ilish, Hilsa from the river Padma. The visual is of the narrator's grandfather shopping with a huge crowd at "Oriental Fish Centre". The drawing is in black and white, except for the green of a tree and the red blood of the sliced Ilish. The adoring look on the faces of the shoppers as they pore over the "beauty" of the fish is so grotesque and surreal, it is straight out of Salvador Dali!
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