Legends of the North-East

A new graphic novel deftly balances the socio-economic realities of a neglected region with its rich tradition of folklore.

Salman Rushdie, in an essay in the book Midnight’s Diaspora: Critical Encounters with Salman Rushdie (edited by Daniel Herwitz and Ashutosh Varshney), writes of the trouble with explanation — the kind that every author is expected to have on the tip of his tongue the moment his/her new book is out in print. But Rushdie isn’t the only one to turn up his nose at having to describe motivations and prescribe meaning to every section of his book. Author Parismita Singh, out with her debut work The Hotel At The End Of The World, is given to a similar disposition.

 

The author, in recent interviews, has declined from providing any “interpretation” to her graphic novel. Fair enough. Her influences are evident in the stark black-and-white illustrations of the novel, ranging from folk traditions of the North-East, where she grew up to her grandmother’s tales, to modern-day troubles in the still-under developed region. Singh, who hails from Assam, mixes the two quite subtlely but expertly. Therefore, a narrative that is peppered with folk tales of the devil and death, but also contemporary references such as one of the characters struggling with “no network” on his mobile phone due to the rains, never feels absurd.

The book begins rather mysteriously, with a dark illustration of a shack-like hotel — it’s the hotel at the end of the world, after all. It’s a place that few travellers stray into; those who do usually do so in search of a refuge from the incessant rains. They gather hungrily around a meal of fresh pork curry and rice dished out by Pema, the middle-aged, grouchy woman who runs the hotel with her husband. In true Canterbury Tales style, each of the travellers has a story to tell, one after the other. The most peculiar of the lot is the pair of Kona and Kuja. With their physical handicaps (Kona, who is severely long-sighted, carries the physically-stunted Kuja in a basket on his back), these two men intrigue their audience, regaling them with curious tales of their attempts to cross over to China and their subsequent, harried search for a “floating island”.

Singh’s work is fresh and breezy, her narrative flows consistently, her illustrations less so; but are interesting in parts. The work certainly lacks the intensity that was so overwhelming in Marjane Satrapi’s autobiographical graphic novel Persepolis, set in Iran, or the free-flow of Indian works in the genre such as Sarnath Banerjee’s Corridor. This one falls somewhere in between.

Singh is particularly good at graphic detailing — her long-shot frames are carefully and beautifully drawn, and they work well when accompanied with minimal text. Her close-up sketches, however, are oddly hasty and rough, yet they seem to lend character to the trouble-ridden faces we meet in the novel — the consistently tired, line-drawn appearance of the traveller, the persistent scowl of the disgruntled Pema, or the quiet, resigned expression of the young orphan girl who works at the hotel.

The novel, however, doesn’t quite traverse beyond the little tales that bind these characters, largely because they seem far too short — just as you are drawn into one, it hurries to a close. That is a pity because the characters, each enveloped in his/her own fable, exude a mysterious, even mischievous air. A longer novel would have certainly made this more worth your while. It remains, therefore, closer to a comic book than to a full-blown graphic novel. The author is now involved in a project with the Pao Collective, a newly-formed group of Indian comic book artists. Perhaps the Pao Anthology, their collaborative effort in the making, will be a fuller endeavour.

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THE HOTEL AT THE END OF THE WORLD
Author: Parismita Singh
Publisher: Penguin
Pages: 144
Price: Rs 350