Brought to book: the MTV generation

SPEAKING VOLUMES

Excuse me for not commenting on Rupa Bajwa's inclusion in the Orange Prize shortlist, or on Rohinton Mistry's presence on the IMPAC shortlist this year.

Bear with me while I decline to comment on the declining standard of reviewers/ critics/ publishers/ New Indian Writers In English today in India. And allow me to draw a discreet veil over the last few book launches in the city.

The reason why I have better things to discuss is because I've spent the last few days in the company of one of the few books this year that has made me want to go out, grab innocent passers-by by their kurta sleeves, and abjure them to plunk their money down at the nearest bookshop.

And this despite the fact that Corridor has no plot to speak of, a storyline so thin that it could give Delhi's anorexic models a serious complex, and characters whom I last met back in the days when it was trendy to be a jhola-carrying watcher of Mrinal Sen films.

Sarnath Banerjee's approach to literature is codified in a single line that encapsulates what he says is the secret of success: "chew everything well". Like the late Douglas Adam's answer to the question, "What is the meaning of life?" (42, as in the number) or Terry Pratchett's answer to the equally important question, "What is the colour of magic?" (octarine; don't ask), this is one of those lines destined for cult status.

What Corridor does goes beyond the fact that it's being pushed as one of India's first graphic novels. (The cartoonist E P Unny claims to have created the very first graphic novel, available online at www.jaalmag.com, but to my admittedly neophyte eyes, his attempt reads more like an entertaining comic strip for the beyond-juvenile segment rather than a full-fledged novel proper.) Sarnath has introduced a truly inspired ensemble cast of characters, from Jehangir Rangoonwalla, bookseller, to aphrodisiac-seeking Shintu, to Digital Dutta, and given them very little to do beyond uttering the odd profundity.

But he's pulled off two things that the average Indian novelist would give his or her right arm to possess. Corridor is set in Delhi and Kolkata, and you'll have to look long and hard before you find a novel that so effortlessly captures both cities without descending into self-conscious cleverness.

From the first panel, set in Connaught Place, peopled with characters who need "the soul of Chengiz Khan to survive a June afternoon in Delhi", to a later, pithy characterisation of the place, "Delhi is the city of couples", to the tongawallah at Turkman Gate eating a companionable breakfast with his horse, Sarnath knows these mean streets and unravels their secrets.

All you need to know about Shintu is captured in this little riff: "Shintu's father belongs to a generation of Bengali men who put unshakeable trust in Gelusil: a pink antacid, which according to them, can cure everything from migraines to humble nose blocks, and, who knows, perhaps even cancer."

And Sarnath gets Kolkata perfectly, from the Free School street bargains in obscure albums to Olypub, where "bhadraloks drink Old Monk and fantasise about kinky sex with their secretaries", to the angel atop Victoria Memorial, looking on as latent lovers consume peanuts (inset drawing: "cheapest consumable in one of the cheapest cities in the world").

More than most Indian writers except perhaps Ruchir Joshi and Upamanyu Chatterjee, Sarnath speaks our language "" Indian English, Hinglish, Bonglish and all subdialects thereof. He knows the kind of conversations we have "" the foreigner from Rishikesh, riffing on being in the spiritual heart of India (selling Ikea catalogues, but that's a different story); he captures the typography of the Shafakhana-e-Hind form ("Have you wasted semen in early life? If so, why, when, how?") and juxtaposes calendar art with a brightly coloured Hanuman, meditations from Baudrillard with those awful charts we used to use as kids that taught us about everything from fruits to national leaders to, in this case, Good Habits.

The graphic novel is a form that should have come to India decades earlier, given that we grew up imprinted with the indelible images from Amar Chitra Kathas, election ballot forms with that wealth of symbols and kitschy calendars that traced the fading fortunes of film stars with the rising status of various household gods.

It's often seen "" incorrectly "" as a form that appeals to cartoonists who may have a small writing talent, when the truth is that you need to be a truly inspired creative writer in order to write a great graphic novel.

It's an unequal division of talent: Neil Gaiman, who is primarily a graphic novelist, can cross over into mainstream fiction writing without having to shift gears a great deal, but Terry Pratchett, primarily a very funny writer, would have to work very hard at his visual skills before he made even the passing grade as a graphic novelist.

If Corridor works, it's because it's the first serious contender in this field in India. Its flaws, interestingly enough, are the flaws of many a first novel "" not enough meat on the admittedly exquisite skeleton of his story and meandering, aimless storylines that mimic the aimlessness of modern life a tad too faithfully.

But this is only Sarnath's first book, and it's a brilliant experiment. He could have fobbed us off with the graphic novel done desi-style "" created a league of extraordinary babus, offered us LangotiMan, Dilli's answer to the Caped Crusader, or fallen back on stereotypes. Instead, what he's created is a blend of MTV-style humour, sharp visual wit and a romance so self-consciously laid back that its sappiness is oddly touching.

What makes the act of reading so much fun at this particular point in time is that the next generation of writers, the ones who were too young to be "midnight's children", are staking their claim to much more than the territory covered by the battered shamiana of literary fiction.

They're willing to move outside the tent, to annex the kind of writing "" screenplays, graphic novels, science fiction "" that they read when they were growing up. Sarnath Banerjee isn't offering pallid homage to Alan Moore and company.

He's standing up and asking to be included in their ranks, creating a world as instantly identifiable as Moore's Victorian London, or in a different way, Rushdie's nostalgia-drenched Mumbai. I'd like to believe that he's not the only one knocking at the door, demanding to be let in.

nilroy@lycos.com