A return to childhood - Kampung Boy

It amazes me at times that while we share a cultural and social history with several nations in Asia, one would never guess it going by the popular culture and social media that form a large part of our lives. Our bookstores, for instance, display tons of European, American as well as African books, but almost nothing from Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam or China.

On a recent trip to Malaysia, therefore, I was on the lookout for children's books by local authors. It wasn't easy, for most bookstores (like the ones in India) displayed American and British children's titles or some Malaysian titles in Bahasa. After some questioning and prodding of the staff at the stores, I was delighted to find children's books by Malaysian and Chinese authors. I bought six and began reading them on returning home.

Lat published his first book for children, Kampung Boy, in 1979. It's an autobiographical narrative in which he attempts to recreate the days of his childhood living in a traditional Malay house called a kampung while growing up on a rubber plantation. 

Two years later, he followed it up with Town Boy, which describes the years he spent in Ipoh where he went to live when he was eleven. A decade later, he published Kampung Boy: Yesterday and Today juxtaposing contemporary and earlier Malay childhood using the same format of brilliantly illustrated pages, largely in black and white, and accompanying text.

  

Kampung Boy: Yesterday and Today by Lat - whose real name is Mohammed Nor - is an absolute delight to read. Lat takes us down memory lane, through homes that were full of love and inventiveness, and playgrounds where every toy had to be created by the children and their parents. The games they played included equal participation by ants, pangolins, cows, angry honeybees and sleepy pythons. Rural life is presented as exciting rather than bucolic, full of adventure and, at times, danger.

Of course, there's a lot of nostalgia and a lot of idealisation of childhood. But there's also a subtle plea to parents to cease being over-protective, helicoptering, competitive mums and dads. 






The artwork of Kampung Boy - a mixture of caricature and evocative detailing - is wonderfully expressive, enabling the author-illustrator to say a lot without using too many words. Lat doesn't follow the graphic novel format favoured by a number of contemporary writers, or the manga style that originated in Japan. Instead, moving as he does from being a newspaper cartoonist-columnist to one attempting an autobiographical narrative,  he uses the page as a canvas and fills it up with a single scene that captures the essence of the tale he wants to tell.   

I introduced the book to a group of students who have learning differences and built a reading and writing activity around it. It was heartening to see that they liked the book a great deal, and would either stay back and try and read a few more pages or come in early the next day to continue with the story. The illustrations helped them make sense of the story and the minimal text and unusual fonts used by the author made it easier for them to read the narration. 

The one thing I did not like about Lat's work was that I detected a certain internalisation of colonial attitudes, though. As the children - depicted with 'non-human' expressions - leave their 'nature-phase' behind them and enter the world of schools and academia, their faces take on more human orientations. I shall probably have to examine the whole of the Kampung series before making very definitive statements.

All in all, a great addition to your library!

Sita’s Ramayana - Using old stories and traditional art to render new perspectives

This graphic novel is a collaborative effort between Samhita Arni, a writer, and Moyna Chitrakar, a patua artiste. Samhita’s first book, titled The Mahabharatha: A Child’s View, was published when she was twelve. Moyna Chitrakar is from a Bengali community of Muslim and Hindu patua folk artistes who are painters, lyricists, singers and performers rolled into one.  Traditionally, men undertake the patua art assisted by the women but Moyna is an independent patua artiste. Many barriers are thus broken here. Women take on the traditional patriarchal epic Ramayana and present their perspective not only on the story of Rama and Sita but also on war and governance.

        In this book, the narrative does not begin, as is usual, with the birth of Rama or the marriage of Sita and Rama, two focal events that reveal Rama’s divinity and his strength and skill in archery. Instead, in a feminist manner, Arni and Chitrakar begin by asking questions about the woman who faces the predicament of loss of identity and home. What happens to a woman who is far away from her father’s house and is abandoned by her husband when she is pregnant with their child?  Sita rescues herself not by finding a man to depend on but by finding her voice, and identifying herself by her mother’s name. She says, “I am Sita, daughter of the Earth, sprung from the same womb that nurtures this forest. . . . The world of men has banished me” (8-9). Sita reminds us of a tradition of strong women who do not let themselves feel overpowered by male oppression but retain the power to think, feel and take their own decisions.

       

In her telling of the story of Ramayana, Sita does not hesitate to speak from her perspective nor does she mince words. She blames Lakshmana for much of what happened, but reiterates that it is not Lakshmana per se who is the culprit, but all men who think that being male gives them the birthright of domination over women.

               

           Sita’s Ramayana is a reminder that war is perpetrated and fought by men but its primary victims are women. War makes heroes of men, says Sita, “if they are the victors. … But if you are a woman – you must live through defeat . . .  You become the mother of dead sons, a widow, or an orphan, or worse, a prisoner”. Apart from the emotional turmoil women go through, they also have to face an obliteration of their selves and their identities.

    The book both begins and ends with the focus firmly on Sita. Although rejected and abandoned in the forest, “[a]t her touch, the flower creepers and trees of Dandaka forest awoke from their long sleep” (8). Sita has the power of regeneration, the life-giving and life-enhancing ‘feminine’ ability rather than the destructive and warring ‘masculine’ ability. And finally, she turns the tables – it is she who abandons Rama; it is she who has a secure place of refuge in the home of her mother. Unlike Rama who, while building the bridge, could enlist the co-operation of the ocean only by threatening to destroy the sea-creatures (61-3), Sita does not need to threaten to receive help.

       

The artwork of the graphic novel also subtly contributes to defying certain hegemonic notions of good and bad, male and female. Rama and Sita are represented with dark brown complexions, while the rakshasas, Ravana, Kumbhakarna and Indrajit are blue. In mainstream ACK comics, the asuras, demons and rakshasas are of a dark brown complexion while the gods Krishna, Rama and Shiva are coloured blue. Chitrakar thus reminds the reader of the constructedness of even the most well-entrenched stereotypes.  She also makes the point that when Sita walked out of the circle drawn by Lakshmana, it was not an act of foolishness or wilfulness but a reaction to the patriarchal confinement of women. The two panels that depict the drawing of the circle and Sita waiting alone for news of Rama and Lakshmana show her behind bars (20-1), a prisoner of the rules laid down by men. The windows in the earlier panels had no bars. 

Moon Mountain

I picked up a copy of the graphic novel, Moon Mountain, a year ago, but got around to reading it only last week. Moon Mountain is an adaptation of Bibhutibhushan Bandopadhyay’s classic children’s book Chander Pahar (1937). I have always been fascinated by his Pather Panchali, especially his sensitive depiction of the unfortunate Durga. 

The art work of the graphic novel is dominated by dark colours, speaking of a brooding personality, and perilous adventures. At first glance, I wondered whether children would find it appealing, especially since the adaptation has stuck to the linear perspective employed by Bandopadhyay, and begun with Shankar’s disappointment at having to work at a dead-end job in a small town after his college years in the dazzling metropolis of early twentieth century Calcutta.

The story unravels rather slowly in the first few pages, but the action panels on page 2 provide us with a hint of the adventure to come. I especially liked the way in which the illustrator, Mukherjee, has made use of repeated figures to indicate the flow of time. Soon enough, a few pages later, our intrepid hero is in Uganda in East Africa, working for a construction company laying new railway lines.

Shankar faces many adventures both at the hand of predatory and dangerous animals. The excitement picks up when he rescues a veteran explorer, Diego Alvarez, who tells him of how he had traced the fabled diamond mines of Richtersveld. Soon enough, Shankar is infected with the gold-and-diamond fever, and he sets off with Diego to explore the wilderness, and also, find himself.

 Other than the protagonist, Shankar, a central character is Diego Alvarez. Like Kurtz of Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, Diego is a complex person who also believes in the Empire’s mission and modus operandi of claiming all that the natives own as his. Like a good coloniser, he even draws Shankar into the enterprise of the Empire. But during the resulting adventure, Shankar learns to think for himself and while he loves and respects Alvarez, chooses to strike out a path different from that of his mentor.  

It is interesting to note that while the author of the original text, Bibhutibhushan Bandopadhyay, had never travelled to Africa, he researched the place considerably. Thus, the narrative strikes very few false notes. 

When Bandopadhyay first published his novel, it seized the imagination of readers with its descriptions of Africa, its velds, its mountains, its wildlife and, of course, the allure of gold, silver – and diamonds! Chander Pahar was translated into English in 2002, reimagined as a film and as a graphic novel in 2013-14. 

The script for the graphic novel is by US-based Saurav Mohapatra and the illustrations are by Sayan Mukherjee. Children are sure to find this an enjoyable read.

(All the images are taken from the book)