ILLUSTRATING STORIES FROM REAL LIFE
Funded by The Damroo Project | IDC IIT Bombay 2013
In 2013 India was rocked by a sudden spate of farmer suicides, particularly in the regions of Vidarbha, Maharashtra. A few months later a project was initiated by Prof. Shilpa Ranade who with her creative team visited the region to document the farmers’ stories, their lives and the role BT cotton played in the suicides. This was done through conversations with the surviving family members.
Prof. Ranade invited different illustrators to respond to these texts and scripts. We had to turn them into stories that would become part of a collective graphic novel. As a struggling artist I was able to identify with some conflicts faced by Indian farmers. My own frustrations were projected into intricate and disturbing images of burden, grief, innocence, responsibility and loneliness. Since the setting of the stories was rural, I wrote and illustrated two stories in local languages (Marathi and Hindi) and then translated them into English - ‘The Setting Sun’ and ‘My type of God’.
To know more about this issue, and the urgent need for using indigenous seeds, you can read a research article here.