All Quiet in Vikaspuri

Always on the lookout for something a little different, I was inspired by the account of Harnath Banerjee’s graphic novels about life in India in the August 13, 2016 “ The New Yorker”, and particularly the author’s take on Banerjee’s most recent, “All Quiet un Vikaspuri” which the article describes as depicting “an apocalyptic battle for water in the drought-plagued city of Delhi.” The book is so good that I am going to try to obtain his others, “Corridor”, “The Barn Owl’s Wondrous Capers” and “The Harappa Files.”Graphic novels are, for me, an acquired taste. For example, I didn’t cotton to “Cousin Joseph”, Jules Feiffer’s new work, despite the considerable fuss being made over it. But I am quite taken with “Vikaspuri”. Banerjee peels off the veneer of success shingled on the New India. In the process, he shows how impossible it is to solve Delhi’s water problems. I’d love to see him take his hand to Flint’s water problem next.Banerjee does a number of neat things in this book. For one, it’s multilingual. While the story is carried along in English, the bits in Hindi, Urdu, and Bengali are untranslated. It was fun to supply what I guessed might have been said. The text also crosses cultural lines to good advantage. For the titles of a series of videos, he finds western analogs, “Savung Private Arora,” “Bridge on the River Yamuna” and” “ Khurana’s List.” (“One man’s crusade to save a community of Punjabi Khatris of New Rajendra Nagar against the onslaught of Paschim Vakar.”)Whatever you take it as, a comment on global warming, a treatise on government malfeasance, or a howl against mistreatment of the great unwashed, it succeeds.End note. You can’t do better than “The New Yorker” article referred to above to get the low down on this book. Getting the book itself took a while. It has not been published here, but Amazon produced this copy for me (after a considerable wait). It was worth it. As of October 22, Amazon it had four copies on hand.) It can also supply his earlier graphic novels.

The media could not be loaded.  Wort the Penny! Binding is really good and the narrative is also interesting. You won't feel bored.

I am quite disappointed with this one. Barring a few good frames, the whole thing is a senseless ramble on "issues" we've heard a thousand times before.

Corridor, Barn Owl, Harappa - superb, this one - umm, too little of a good thing? Some great satire but higher standards were set, so...

Still in love.

Superb