Banerjee and Roy will employ a methodology that is in keeping with the spirit of a memoir rather than a tract. They feel that an open-ended and friendly dialogue between themselves, which brings into play differing individual perceptions of the city, should provide the starting point for the graphic novel.

The work will not be organized according to prominent localities in Kolkata, nor will it provide a chronological account of the city’s history. Rather, each chapter of the book will take off from a particular theme based on anecdotes, oral history, myths, popular culture, hearsay or gossip “and take the reader through a graphic journey using comics, photographs, running words, archival materials, knick-knacks picked from the road...”

Banerjee and Roy are interested in how the popular culture of 19th century Bengal manifests itself in today’s Kolkata. The 19th century was a time when popular songs, writing, painting, performance and sculpture acquired energy and character, and when Victorian mores began to affect perceptions about popular culture. The collaborators are keen to explore the sensibility, folk wisdom, attitudes and mores underlying the popular art of the19th century. They are taken up with the defining mood of a “civilization based on leisure.”

Banerjee and Roy propose to write about forms such as Jatra (popular theatre). They will trace the development of Jatra from their experience, for instance, of “sitting in the old and rambling mansion in Baghbazar, called the Nattabari, once an epicentre of the Jatra scene of Kolkata. Now a huge ruin. The owner, eighty year old Mr. Roychoudhury, also looked pretty ruined with age and nostalgia.”

They are particularly interested in the satirical and comic elements in many folk and popular forms, for instance, the “sycophants, hangers-on, anglicized bhadralok” in the sculpted images of Kumartuli and the ironic imagery of Kalighat paintings. They will also look at how the folk culture of Kolkata underwent a steady decline towards the end of the 19th century with the emergence of the Victorian-influenced ‘polite society’.

Sarnath Banerjee and Anindya Roy hope to find a mainstream publisher for their manuscript. They also expect to have the book serialized in a national daily and will look for sponsorship for exhibitions to display the process of writing the graphic novel.

March 2001