Friday, July 2, 2010

Should any free soul come across...

These few pages are the manifestation of my ever-growing passion about anarchism. I created this comics as part of ‘comics without border’ an online comics workshop organized by COMIX.INDIA and Eastside, London during June this year (you can read other participants' works here). Thanks to Bharath Murthy and Ciara Brennan for giving me the opportunity to go for this excellent journey (It’s a pity that the output of the workshop was not great). Otherwise I wouldn’t go for this story right now.
The b-w version of the comics is already published by Kindle magazine, a Kolkata-based art and culture magazine, in their July issue graphic storytelling supplement. (The ten 4-page works published are created by Aditya Bidikar & Nitin Veturkar, Arkadeep Bhattacharya, Bharath Murthy, Gokul Gopalakrishnan, Amrita Sen & Harsho Mohan Chattoraj, Kailash Iyer, Lavanya Karthik, Deepak Sharma, Nandita Basu, Orijit Sen).
I won’t like to say much about this work but all that I can say is – it was fun. ‘Fun’ in a different way than one may assume. While creating the storyline I fell in love with Emma Goldman. I spent a whole week in a trance, hardly spoke to anyone but my brother and then I realized what she meant when she said -“I did not believe that a Cause which stood for a beautiful ideal, for anarchism, for release and freedom from convention and prejudice, should demand the denial of life and joy.” This comics is all about that.
I would very much like to make a full size graphic novel (I already have plans) with these characters someday where I can go for a longer journey through anarchism.

The free expression of the hopes and aspirations of a people is the greatest and only safety in a sane society.