Book review: 'Legends Of Halahala'

Legends  Of Halahala
Appupen
HarperCollins
144 pages
Rs499

Much of literature has dedicated itself to exploring love’s obsessive nature, its unexpected unions, and its weird results. Love can be destructive, like in Romeo and Juliet, and it can also be heart-warming reassurance, like your favourite romcom. Yes, much has been said of love’s powers, but when Appupen tackles the subject in his sophomore book, Legends Of Halahala, he refuses to say another word on the matter. The five comic tales in this compilation tackle all of love’s vagaries without a single speech or thought bubble.

Not that you’ll miss them. The stories are bookended by yowling gargoyle faces which look alternately furious and deliriously happy. The stories themselves are powered by characters that are constantly in a frenzy of action — gesticulating, running, dying, killing, destroying and saving. These few stories traverse every unflattering angle of love in different times and locations. The first story, for example, titled ‘Stupid’s Arrow’, has the author riffing off the Romeo and Juliet storyline. A soul-patched young prince accidentally kills the queen of the neighbouring kingdom while trying to get a message across to his beloved princess, and war breaks out. The two kingdoms are divided by a yawning pit, which is soon filled up by the dead bodies of warring soldiers. After the two kings kill each other, the young couple is shown tripping merrily towards each other over the dead bodies, presumably towards their happily-ever-after.

This simultaneous, and even harmonious, co-existence of cynicism and hope comes through repeatedly in the stories. Love is destructive, but it is also the emotion felt by a young boy for ‘Ghost Girl’, a superhero who saves him and his family from a beast in a dark alley. That love finds its expression when he, as a pudgy adult man, sneaks off to the terrace of his building in order to dress as Ghost Girl and contemplatively smoke a cigarette. It’s a touching story of gratitude and admiration, about how love can free parts of you that would never find expression otherwise — like the cross-dresser in an everyman.

In another tale, what seems to be the last surviving man in a dystopian future cities attempts to scratch out proof of his existence on a stone — ‘16917P was here’, a code that corresponds both to his name-tag and to the address of the rescued adult man in the earlier story. Our love of life includes a desperate desire to be recorded, to matter somehow, even at the cost of actual survival. In one of the book’s quirkier turns, the final story’s protagonist has her wish fulfilled when she grows balloon-like breasts. After years of adorning billboards and fending off lustful fans, the left breast decides to hold itself to ransom and bounces off the horrified starlet’s chest and into the horizon. Consumerism is love too, and , a particularly stifling one for left breasts.

The drawings change with efficient speed according to the needs of the story. While Ghost Girl’s story is done with careful pencil shading and ochre lighting, a tale of three creatures finding love after pages of murderous rampaging is done up in bubble-gum shades of purple, yellow and green. In the dystopic vision of a dying man, the drawings are encroached increasingly by static-like curls of black that eventually cover the entire panel.

In Hindu mythology, halahala is the poisonous by-product of a bid for immortality by devas (the gods) and asuras (the demons).  Shiva had to step in to save the day by drinking the poison which turned his throat blue. Here, Halahala is the best and worst of Earth. In our search for love, we often take a turn towards something dark and destructive. Legends Of Halahala is a cautionary tale, and a rather beautiful one at that.

@apoorva_dutt