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Indian by Choice
The cover is particularly attention-grabbing, in its shocking pink colour (mithai pink, in Indian parlance), with some Indian motifs and the quintessential Indian auto as the picture, decorated in a typically gaudy style. One can almost hear popular Hindi ‘fillum’ songs blaring out of the ‘mujic system’ that the autowala (asleep in the picture) is sure to have a penchant for. And though the autowala’s face is not visible, one can imagine that there is a dog-eared vernacular paper covering it. In fact, when the book was lying on the reviewer’s desk at her work place, several of her colleagues came by and, attracted by the cover, picked it up and browsed through the book. Even within the pages of the novel, the illustrations do not disappoint and the book is attractive for its visual appeal. The illustrator, Neelabh Banerjee, is a staff artist of The Times of India. He, along with senior editor Jug Suraiya, had created the popular and extremely cheeky comic ‘Dubyaman’s Duniya’, about American president George W. Bush Jr. Amit Dasgupta is a serving Indian diplomat, whose professional work has taken him to several countries. The nature of his work has also given him the opportunity to meet and interact with several young, second-generation NRIs and get familiar with their attitudes toward India and Indian-ness. This is useful because to make expatriates aware of their roots and have pride in the country of their genesis, is the aim of this graphic novel. Who should read the book? Well, mainly it targets the ABCDs, the American Born Confused Desi audience, or the second-generation Indian who is out of touch with his/her motherland. This is the young person who prefers to be Harry rather than Harminder, Shanks instead of Shankar or Pam instead of Parminder. To this young person, India is an uncomfortable and alien place with too many flies and people, traffic snarl ups, dusty streets and oily food. The tone gets a trifle didactic and the author pushes his point too much. In fact, sometimes it seems that one is reading passages out of a history or travel book, rather than a supposedly light-hearted illustrated novel. Unlike the regular comic strip, where the text in the ‘bubbles’ is short and pithy, in this book, it is sometimes so long that one ends up looking more closely at the pictures rather than reading what the author has to say. That also maybe because there is really nothing new in what he is saying. However, it is a good volume to give to not just the ABCDs but also our own CDs, Confused Desis, the adolescents in the metros and satellite cities who have the great American stars shining in their eyes. The book’s easy readability and direct look at what India really is, in terms of the values that it propagates, the family support that exists and its booming economy and the resultant jobs and affluence as opposed to the subtle marginalisation of Indians in America have been nicely brought out. The story is about young Mandy aka, Mandeep, who has to come to India to attend a cousin’s marriage to represent his family based in America. He comes with all the prejudices and doubts that are usual to the second-generation Indians in America. In fact, when asked why he calls himself Mandy, when his name is Mandeep, he replies that he does not feel like a Mandeep. Mandy is his identity and his true self. However, four weeks of interacting with his grandparents, cousins and their friends and Simrita, the young girl who takes him around India, and he changes his mind. On the flight back when his co-passenger introduces himself, as "Tom from Arizona", he says, "I’m Mandeep". And thus Mandy becomes Indian not only by birth but also by choice.
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IF
there is a paean to Indian-ness, it is this, it is this, it is this. The
interesting thing is the format of the book. It’s a graphic novel,
using two additional mediums, text, that takes the form of e-mails
exchanged by the characters and photographs. The juxtaposition of the
three mediums makes for interesting visuals. Indeed, the look and feel
of all the 93 glossy pages is rich and colourful.