Delhi Calm


Vishwajyoti Ghosh - 2010
    A time of democracy ruled with an iron fist. In this landscape of turmoil and unrest tours the Naya Savera Band, dreaming of ‘change’ and stoking the fire of rebellion with music. But as reality intrudes and hostilities underlying the common dream rear up, idealist and poet VP, scholarly Master and ever-pragmatic Parvez drift away from each other... until their paths cross again in Delhi, in the middle of the biggest civil crisis to ever grip the nation. Once again, the trio find themselves reluctantly uniting against their common enemy – the State. Will they escape the ever-watchful eyes of the government? Will their dreams of an egalitarian, socialist democracy come to nothing? Will the Naya Savera Band raise its voice in song again? Find out in Vishwajyoti Ghosh’s graphic re-imagining of one of the most seminal moments in the history of Indian democracy.

Munnu: A Boy From Kashmir


Malik Sajad - 2015
    Life revolves around his family: Mama, Papa, sister Shahnaz, brothers Adil and Akhtar and, his favourite, older brother Bilal. It also revolves around Munnu’s two favourite things – sugar and drawing.But Munnu’s is a childhood experienced against the backdrop of conflict. Bilal’s classmates are crossing over into the Pakistan-administered portion of Kashmir to be trained to resist the ‘occupation’; Papa and Bilal are regularly taken by the military to identification parades where informers will point out ‘terrorists’; Munnu’s school is closed; close neighbours are killed and the homes of Kashmiri Hindu families lie abandoned, as once close, mixed communities have ruptured under the pressure of Kashmir’s divisions.Munnu is an amazingly personal insight into everyday life in Kashmir. Closely based on Malik Sajad’s own childhood and experiences, it is a beautiful, evocatively drawn graphic novel that questions every aspect of the Kashmir situation – the faults and responsibilities of every side, the history of the region, the role of Britain and the West, the possibilities for the future. It opens up the story of this contested and conflicted land, while also giving a brilliantly close, funny and warm-hearted portrait of a boy’s childhood and coming-of-age.

Birbal The Clever


Meera Ugra - 1980
    He dispensed justice, dealt diplomatically with other rulers, led military expeditions and composed poetry. In addition, he also rescued Akbar from the dangers of arrogance and unfettered power. Most importantly, he made the Great Mughal laugh. Birbal, a real person with the name 'Maheshdas', was one of the 'nine gems' of court advisers of Akbar the Great. He also composed poetry by the pen name 'Brahma'. He led an expedition into faraway Afghanistan and managed to subdue the turbulence there. Hearing the news of his death there, Akbar burst forth: "Birbal, you always gave the helpless whatever you had. I am helpless now and yet you have left nothng for me!" Birbal's name however does not rest on these achievements. He is turned into a legend by the innumerable stories of his wit and wisdom, sense of justice and fairplay, and above all, his uncanny skill in turning the tables on his detractors including the king himself. In the stories here, Birbal proposes the punishment of a kiss for the offense of pulling a hair from the king's moustache; shows how one's own child is the most beautiful; proves that the whims of a child can beat the king; makes the king realize that inauspiciousness can be mutual; guesses the mother-tongue of a linguist with a spray of water.

Mumbai Confidential: Good Cop, Bad Cop


Saurav Mohapatra - 2012
    Five years ago, Arjun Kadam used to be a cop, a rising star in the ranks of the Mumbai Encounter Squad-an elite unit tasked by the powers-that-be to carry out extrajudicial executions of notorious gangsters. But the death of his pregnant wife at childbirth derailed his life and set him off on a spiral of depression and drug addiction, a pale shadow of his former self. When Kadam is the victim of a hit-and-run that also claims the life of a street urchin, he goes into coma for a month. Upon awakening, he finds a new sense of purpose and pursues the investigation, taking him on a journey through the deep, dark heart of Mumbai - from the glitzy tinsel of Bollywood, to the dank depths of the Mumbai Underworld, where the line between the police and the criminals has been blurred beyond recognition by his ex-colleagues on the Encounter Squad, who are now de-facto gangsters in uniform, running the very same extortion rackets they were tasked to eradicate. Obsessed with his mission, Kadam sets off a desperate gambit of deadly intrigue and deception that pits him against the very machine of violence and corruption he once helped create. “Gorgeously noir.” - Ron Marz (WITCHBLADE, ARTIFACTS, SHINKU, GREEN LANTERN) “Perfect example of noir storytelling in comics.” - GEEKADELPHIA.COM “Mohapatra's dialogue is sharp and his script is innovative, putting a clever twist on the genre. Shinde's lush and gorgeous cinematic art impresses the most, from strongly individual faces and photorealistic body language to a deep and rich range of shadows and light, water and blood. This is stylish, sophisticated, and metropolitan: a fresh entry in the noir genre with an Asian twist.” - PUBLISHERS WEEKLY “It reads like a sub-continental version of SIN CITY and has all the best elements of clas

Kari


Amruta Patil - 2007
    Ruth, saved by safety nets, leaves the city. Kari, saved by a sewer, crawls back into the fray of the living. She writes ad copy for hair products and ill-fitting lingerie, falls for cats and roadside urchins, and the occasional adventuress in a restaurant. As Danger Chhori, her PVC-suit-clad alter ego, she unclogs sewers and observes the secret lives of people and fruit. And with Angel, Lazarus, and the girls of Crystal Palace forming the chorus to her song, she explores the dark heart of Smog City – loneliness, sewers, sleeper success, death – and the memory of her absentee Other. Sensuously illustrated and livened by wry commentaries on life and love, Kari gives a new voice to graphic fiction in India.

A Dose Of Laughter


R.K. Laxman - 2002
    Cartoons and jokes.

Market Day


James Sturm - 2010
    A proud artisan, he takes his donkey-drawn cart to the market only to be turned away when the distinctive shop he once sold to now stocks only cheaply manufactured merchandise. As the realities of the marketplace sink in, Mendleman unravels. James Sturm draws a quiet, reflective, and beautiful portrait of eastern Europe in the early 1900s–bringing to life the hustle and bustle of an Old World marketplace on the brink of industrialization. Market Day is an ageless tale of how economic and social forces can affect a single life. An award-winning cartoonist of the books Golem’s Mighty Swing, James Sturm’s America, Satchel Paige: Striking Out Jim Crow, and Adventures in Cartooning, Sturm is a true visionary, having cofounded the Seattle alternative weekly The Stranger and the Center for Cartoon Studies, the country’s premier cartooning school.

Indira


Devapriya Roy - 2018
    Who was Indira Priyadarshini, the person after whom her grandfather named her? And why her? What is her legacy as India’s first—and only—woman prime minister?Over the course of a long, hot summer and a curious friendship with an artist who is working on a biography of Mrs Gandhi, young Indira gets tangled up in the life and times of her memorable namesake. Sometimes by design and sometimes by accident, story after story comes alive—about a childhood spent in Allahabad growing the Vanar Sena, of a youthful romance with the charming Feroze Gandhi, of stints in jail and elephant rides through pouring rain, a magnificent audacity that catapulted India onto the international stage, and of the final, tragic end that ripped apart the fabric of the nation.Real and imagined worlds, the past and present, text and image all entwine as Indira walks us through the most formative decades of political life of India.

The Property


Rutu Modan - 2013
    As they get to know modern Warsaw, Regina is forced to recall difficult things about her past, and Mica begins to wonder if maybe their reasons for coming aren’t a little different than what her grandmother led her to believe.

The Rabbi's Cat


Joann Sfar - 2002
    To his master’s consternation, the cat immediately begins to tell lies (the first being that he didn’t eat the parrot). The rabbi vows to educate him in the ways of the Torah, while the cat insists on studying the kabbalah and having a Bar Mitzvah. They consult the rabbi’s rabbi, who maintains that a cat can’t be Jewish — but the cat, as always, knows better.Zlabya falls in love with a dashing young rabbi from Paris, and soon master and cat, having overcome their shared self-pity and jealousy, are accompanying the newlyweds to France to meet Zlabya’s cosmopolitan in-laws. Full of drama and adventure, their trip invites countless opportunities for the rabbi and his cat to grapple with all the important — and trivial — details of life.Rich with the colors, textures, and flavors of Algeria’s Jewish community, The Rabbi’s Cat brings a lost world vibrantly to life — a time and place where Jews and Arabs coexisted — and peoples it with endearing and thoroughly human characters, and one truly unforgettable cat.

A Contract with God and Other Tenement Stories


Will Eisner - 1978
    The human drama, the psychological insight -- Eisner captures the soul of the city and its troubled inhabitants with pen and ink. The comics medium was altered forever with the publication of this seminal work.

Amar Bari Tomar Bari Naxalbari


Sumit Kumar
    In the newly independent India - food production is at an all time low, Zamindars control the farms, Nehru is dead, the coalation bengal government is headed for the wall and a tiny village in West Bengal plays host to an uprising. From the tiny village of Naxalbari the story travels back and forth in time, as it takes you to pre-independence Hyderabad, post independence Andhra Pradesh and finally to the jungles of Dandkaranya (Bastar and surrounding regions) where the sparks of Naxalbari finally grew into the fire that today impacts India and its people.

Ravana: Roar of the Demon King


Abhimanyu Singh Sisodia - 2011
    No less than a god to his own people, he is the sheer embodiment of evil to his enemies. This arrogant demon brooks no hindrance to snatching his heart's desire, and his terror seems unstoppable to gods and humans alike. But he makes a mistake when he abducts the wife of Lord Rama, the exiled divine ruler of Ayodhya.Ravana is a story of a demon, who dared to challenge the gods, and almost got away with it. Ravana's tale is one that will incite awe and fear simultaneously. Whose side was this enigma on, good or evil? The obvious answer seems to be but one: his own. Or was he really? This graphic novel seeks to explore that question, and others.

MetaMaus: A Look Inside a Modern Classic, Maus


Art Spiegelman - 2011
    In the pages of MetaMaus, Art Spiegelman re-enters the Pulitzer prize-winning Maus, the modern classic that has altered how we see literature, comics, and the Holocaust ever since it was first published twenty-five years ago. Does he probe the questions that Maus most often evokes—Why the Holocaust? Why mice? Why comics?—and gives us a new and essential work about the creative process. MetaMaus includes a bonus DVD-R that provides a digitized reference copy of The Complete Maus linked to a deep archive of audio interviews with his survivor father, historical documents, and a wealth of Spiegelman’s private notebooks and sketches. Compelling and intimate, MetaMaus is poised to become a classic in its own right.

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Vol. 1


Alan Moore - 2000
    The Victorian Era draws to a close and the twentieth century approaches. It is a time of great change and an age of stagnation, a period of chaste order and ignoble chaos. It is an era in need of champions.In this amazingly imaginative tale, literary figures from throughout time and various bodies of work are brought together to face any and all threats to Britain. Allan Quatermain, Mina Murray, Captain Nemo, Dr. Henry Jekyll and Edward Hyde and Hawley Griffin, the Invisible Man, form a remarkable legion of intellectual aptitude and physical prowess: The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.