Barefoot through time a 4 pg comic
Client
Kadak Collective's Bystander Anthology
Year
2020
This anthology led by the Kadak Collective, is a collection of comic and graphic narratives for print and web – about geography and gender, identity and self, boundary and exclusion, experienced through the lens of the bystander. It inculdes Stories, Observations and Witnessings from South Asia from 50+ South Asian creatives. 13 countries complied as 253 page long comics anthology.
The story contributed came under the the chapter of 'belief'. Since the constrain was to make something for 4 pages, the approach was to make it more like a visual poetry rather than a story arc. It takes you through the life of a being born as a tribal, who goes through enunciation ceremony and moves on away from the village and the culture based heavily on geography to find life in the city. It touches upon the changing landscapes that is leaching life and resources from the village to fulfil the demands of the city. It depicts the effect of changing socio political scenario from a perspective of a tribal community whose belief and culture is fading as fast as the degrading landscapes.
All the images drawn here comes from my childhood memories of spending summer holidays in my maternal and paternal grandfather's villages based in Jashpur (Chhattisgarh) and Sundargarh (Orrisa).
The process started with putting down words and images together without giving much attention to panels and page layout. Wanted to put everything down with edited words to them which never changes till the end. Some parts of the story took more space especially the content of page 2 and 3 got edited fully to be merged into one to give space for a slow end.
By the second edit the images got detailed but the 4th page still lacked the impact. So the pages got divided as
Page 1: The birth of a child and its place in the vast space (added picture in picture for the last panel to show vast universe)
Page 2: Delicate nature of life and its changing form (simplified the panels and segregated them as story of goat and a hen )
Page 3: The way things are changing (adding contrast in the top strip and the bottom one)
Page 4: Melancholic balance and our rebirth
I was invited to write a brief note on the word "bystander" which was then selected to be a part of the anthology. It was then launched as a kick starter project which got fully funded and came it being. I wrote and illustrated this piece with the help of Gopika Bashi who mentored and edited it.