Book review: 'The Obliterary Journal'

The Obliterary Journal
Publisher:Blaft Publications
Pages: 269
Price: Rs 695

The Obliterary Journal begins with a Mayan glyph, a Chinese symbol and a radiation sign declaring war on the written word. Right then, an army of scripts and letters charges in to bash up these ‘infidels’, leaving them defeated, but not dispirited. “One day…obliteracy…will prevail!” hacks out the bloodied radiation symbol.

With such a rebellious beginning, you almost get the feeling that you are leafing through a political pamphlet written by literary illegal immigrants. The Obliterary Journal is an anthology by Blaft publications that doesn’t restrict itself to comics — it is a multicoloured pastiche of comics, art, road signs and profiles of auto drivers with crazy rides and crazy attitudes. The Obliterary Journal constitutes a gaggle of discordant voices that are united by two goals: to wipe out the hegemony of the “boring” written word; and to be heard, if not always fully understood. Because they are marginalised and unsupervised by literary conventions, the stories and art in the Journal effortlessly transcend definition and exceed expectations.

The book kicks off with an excerpt from the Hyderabad Graphic Novel by Jai Undurti. The art, by Harsho Mohan Chattoraj, is lush in its depiction of the myths and meanings that knit a city together, and unforgiving in its record of modern dissolution and decay. Another story puts mathematical questions, based on the principles formulated by the twelfth century mathematician Bhaskaracharya, in unexpected contexts, such as calculating the total number of pearls that fall off a woman’s neck during frenzied lovemaking, when one-tenth were caught by her lover, five have rolled away under the bed, and a third have landed on the floor. If high school mathematics textbooks were accompanied by similar illustrations — entwined legs, the curve of a breast and a bare back with pearls slipping down — the general interest in differential calculus would possibly see an upsurge.

One of the most touching sections is a series of simply rendered interviews of a group of old men staying at Karuna Bhavanam, an old-age home in Kerala. The interviews are with men who have played and lost in life, some betrayed by children and wives, and others by greed and religion. They play cards in silence mostly, but as one of them, miffed by the group’s rowdy behaviour, walks off in a huff, another man follows behind him slowly, with this explanation: I’ll go give him company.

It is at this point that the book, seemingly having had enough of rules, human limitations and harsh urban realities, breaks out into a frenzy of distended donkey stomachs that float gently off the pages.

The Journal then takes a trip to Suriname, the smallest sovereign state of South America, to inspect the art on petrol tank covers: female bottoms, stoned Bob Marleys and gaping cartoon mouths yowling for “Lai Diesel!” are popular choices. Buses are emblazoned with the excessively youthful-looking faces of Bollywood B-grade stars such as Himesh Reshammiya and a cherubic Aftab Shivdasani.

A series of one-page comics is penned by Durrrrk Mixer Grinder Serial No. 30277XM03. According to its author biography, it “combines 2,000 watts of power with four interchangeable lift/grind/chop/puree action blades, three double-walled stainless steel jars, and a friendly snap-shut locking system. Its uniquely resilient, sleek design was created specifically for the tough grinding tasks required in the diverse cuisines of India, but is equally capable of handling international recipes. It also writes poetry.”

In Atlantis, a comic by Amruta Patil, the author of Kari, the residents of a high-rise apartment building are examined. A ficus sapling has taken root in the parapet of the building (named ‘Atlantis’) and will one day bring it down. The residents are compared unfavourably to a beehive: bees are, after all, united by a joint purpose but the dwellers of this particular building are isolated and angry, voyeuristically peering at the neighbouring slum for signs of life that they are deprived of. Psychopathic vegetables, the ‘alternate sexuality’ that finds expression in public toilets, political party symbols painted on city walls, and palm leaf engravings of an alien visit to the then-princely state of Nayagarh follow.

The Obliterary Journal quite literally travels beyond the constraints of its own pages, such as with the profiles of auto drivers in Bangalore, petrol cover art, roadside signs, colourful taxis and buses, and by naming a modern high rise after a mythological, underwater city. The book is not as much an act of obliteration of language, as a construction of a new, seemingly limitless, vocabulary.