The God of Injustice
DOES HE KNOW A MOTHER’S HEART?
Arun Shourie is one of the most prominent voices in our country’s public life and discourse. This is his twenty-sixth book.
Does he know a mother’s heart is a book for everyone who has had to contend with pain and loss?
Shourie, trying to keep his own torment aside through the prism of his wife Anita’s angiush. Her beauty is a marginal fact: this book is partly a narrative of her courage, and above all her love, all of which home been tormented by a feckless tale. They have a spastic son, who is now 35. But lives outside of time. Adit’s limbs are helpless his heart is full and fully conscious. He loves everyone and everyone in the family loves him. God just does not stop pounding this helpless, defences child. And then Anita goes down with Parkinson’s.
The bond between parents and child is a boundless, almost mystic, love, and if its price is unbearable for an outsider, how benumbed must be the heart of Arun, Anita and Aditi.
By:
Jennifer Tahiliani
Comic book industry gains importance in India
With popular superhero-like characters Shaktiman, Nagraj and Chacha Chaudhary, Indian comic books have come a long way. They are expected to grow into a Rs.300-400 crore industry in the next decade.
The comic book industry is growing at a stable rate. Right now it is a Rs.50 crore to 100 crore market and in the next 10 years, it’s market is likely to increase manifold.
In India, about 200 comics are published in a year.
It is an exciting time for the industry, says Jatin Varma, founder of ‘Twenty Onwards Media’ , and feels that the annual event Comic Con India will help the industry grow and bring comics and the graphic art medium to a whole new generation of fans.
When asked about the industry's performance in the last 60 years to a comic book publisher , said: "I think saying 60 years is going back too much, though the industry traces its roots back longer than that; comic titles didn't come out till about 40 years ago. Though there has been a steady growth, the late 1990s and early 2000s was one of the slowest periods.
"However, the past five years have seen resurgence, with new labels being formed and new titles being published. A whole new genre of graphic is also being created."
The comic book took off in India when cartoonist Pran tried to penetrate the domination of foreign titles by giving the country its first comic characters Dabu and Professor Adhikari in the 1960s and later introduced Shrimatiji. He continued with his experiments and came out with one of the most popular comic pairs, Chacha Chowdhary-Sabu, in 1973.
Around the same time, Anant Pai of the India Book House launched the series Amar Chitra Katha in 1967. His aim was to tell children stories about historical and mythological figures.
Generations of Indians also grew up on international comic book heroes like Phantom and Mandrake the Magician.
There has been considerable growth in the industry in recent times and graphic novels are finally getting into the Indian scene.
Comics have always been a 'niche' or at least non-mainstream industry. In India, particularly, the main factors hampering growth were stagnation in terms of content and quality. But the recent rise in comics has led to a wide range of styles and comics as well as a huge rise in quality.
There is no unified organization; so there is no one to take note of the 'problems' with the industry. Due to the nature of the medium, which has a long preparation period, and delayed returns on your work, there are always problems in it.
There are a lot of aspiring writers, but they have to be trained to write for comic books. It is not easy to write comics.
People in the business are thinking of new ways to promote the industry.
Big shots in this industry are expanding the Comic Con brand and taking it to different cities. Though the main event, the Annual Indian Comics Convention, will be held annually in Delhi in July, Comic Con Express, starting this year, will bring the same atmosphere of the main convention to new fans in different cities like Mumbai etc.
By:
Madhur Kakwani
