Malik Sajad has marvellously
showed Kashmiris as humanoids of the Hangul deer – the national animal of
Kashmir – to say how both are now endangered species in his graphic novel Munnu.
It is the story of a young boy
growing up in turbulent times and his coming of age.
Munnu does not shy away from
calling a spade a spade. Whether it is the Indian security forces, the
separatist camp, Kashmir’s self-styled ‘intellectuals’ or the shortcomings in
the Kashmiri society – the book tries to present them as Sajad saw it, and as a
result, comes uncomfortably close to reality.
Munnu – like Sajad himself – is
the youngest son of an artisan and belongs to a middle class family, complete
with grandparents and siblings. His craft gets sharper as he grows and at 15,
when he is still in school, he lands up a job as a cartoonist in the valley’s
most widely circulated daily, Greater Kashmir.
Incidents reflecting everyday
lives of Kashmiris make Munnu a touching story. Munnu’s father, for
example, is extra tough on his eldest son, Bilal to ensure he does not follow
in his classmates’ footsteps. Far too many young boys have crossed over the
border to Pakistan Administered Kashmir to receive arms training and wage a
rebellion against the Indian State.
Munnu starts having nightmares
after he watches the funeral of Mustafa – his friend’s father and a local
militant. His father then tells his worried mother that Munnu has no option but
to get used to the “situation”.
There are other moving instances
in the story that tell of a lost childhood – a cricket ground where only the
pitch remains because the rest is covered with graves; the AK-47 rubber stamps
that make Munnu famous in school, a young boy sexually assaulted by a soldier.
And then, Sajad does what few
Kashmiri writers would have had the courage of doing – write against the flaws
in their own society. The bold portrayal of when Munnu finds three men in an
auto late one night assaulting a madwoman while the driver watches on, leaving
him feeling disgusted. Or his encounter with a footsoldier of the separatist
camp. Or, when he discovers the hollowness of Kashmir’s “so-called”
intellectuals.
The idea of drawing Kashmiris as
Hangul humanoids reportedly struck Sajad sometime in 2005-06 when environment
journalist Arif Shafi Wani wrote a story about the endangered deer species.
A few people had died that day but
it appeared as a brief in a small column. That day, I made a cartoon – the head
of a deer along with a Kashmiri – and it’s still on my wall here at home. I
didn’t know then that it would become the main character of my novel. The
editor-in-chief was so pleased that he gave that cartoon space on the front
page.
Malik Sajad, author of Munnu
Sajad said his purpose was not to
point out the flaws with various groups or “romanticise” the picture. “I wrote
it the way I felt it, saw it and remembered it. I wanted to present the
life I lived.”
Sajad’s personal experience due to
his age and the access to opinion-makers that his role as a political
cartoonist gave him led to several critical moments in his life. “Those are the
moments which forced me to write this book.”
One of the most interesting
visuals in the book illustrates the 1846 Treaty of Amritsar, when the Dogra
Maharaja bought Kashmir and Kashmiris for Rs 75 lakh from the British. A pair
of scales weighs gold under the watchful eye of the soldiers while a mob of
common Kashmiris looks on.
Sajad has used no colours in his
novel. According to him, he made the first draft in black and white and just
drew dialogue bubbles as he wanted to save time. However, when he read it, he
realised the little details were impactful. “I wanted to keep it simple. I used
woodcut print type as this was the only way to do it.”
The Hangul humanoids in the novel
are not beautiful, graceful creatures like the Hangul deer in
reality. Sajad said his priority was not to make something pretty. He just
wanted the visuals to capture that environment.
Source: TheQuint
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