The mood is carnage-fuelled in the opening pages of When We Are Strangers. It is 1946; Calcutta, glittering bastion of the British Empire, is ravaged by communal riots. Two characters emerge from the smoky atmosphere — Sita, a student of history, and Mahmud, a photographer. Together, they manage to break into the Indian Museum on Chowringhee Road, to steal, or more precisely, steal back what the British had stolen from them — fragments of a Buddha statue that belongs to Hashtnagar (in Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province).
This graphic novel by Vazira Zamindar and Sarnath Banerjee documents the roil of historic movements as they intersect with ordinary people, and turn them into revolutionaries. It magnifies the resistance of Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, the Pashtun ‘Frontier Gandhi’ who, in 1921, set up Azad schools in his village in Uthmanzai (contemporary Charsadda in Pakistan). Also known as Bacha Khan to his people, he attended an annual All India Congress jalsa in Lahore in 1929, to hear Mahatma Gandhi speak, and initiated his own movement by assembling a non-violent army called the Khudai Khidmatgars (Servants of God).
The text and visuals trace the Frontier Gandhi’s friendship with the Mahatma, as they walk through villages that have been snuffed out by riots. ‘Someone asked if my book was influenced by Dhurandhar’: author Sarnath Banerjee ‘Someone asked if my book was influenced by Dhurandhar’: author Sarnath Banerjee Banerjee’s new book, Absolute Jafar, is an India-Pakistan love story that unfolds across Delhi, Chicago, Karachi and Berlin Interview ‘Someone asked if my book was influenced by Dhurandhar’: author Sarnath Banerjee storyline Rippling with anger The pages of When We Are Strangers are electrifying with sketches and photographs that recount the freedom movement through shifting timelines, rallies and marches, riots in old bazaars.
The drawings, by Banerjee, smoulder with silent rage,
The drawings, by Banerjee, smoulder with silent rage, but also convey the unexpected beauty of a sarai in the midst of an orange orchard, or the resilience of a gathering of Khudai Khidmatgars, their red uniforms in deliberate contrast to the sepia tones of the pages. The illustrations, with their firm dark strokes, rumble with the unrest and indignation of an era. Perhaps the drawings reveal more than the text, which is often explanatory.
Each of the four sections in the book is divided into ‘Acts of Love’ (‘The First Act Of Love: An Intrepid Act of Love’, for instance); each title gives way to subheads in English, Hindi, and Urdu. Each act excavates a nugget of the freedom movement. The narrative follows Sita as she travels alone from Calcutta to Bombay, and then takes the Frontier Mail, joining the Mahatma and his followers in 1938, as they make their way to the North-West Frontier Province
She meets Mahmud, a Waziri tribesman who has attended Bacha Khan’s Azad School, and who wields a second-hand Rolleiflex camera. In the section titled ‘The Third Act Of Love: An Act of Love For The Ages/To Stand Your Ground’, Mahmud tells Sita about Santees (1930), referring to the massacre of unarmed Khudai Khidmatgars in Qissa Khwani Bazaar. They were protesting the arrest of Bacha Khan, whose Azad Schools resounded with poetry and theatre that called for freedom from colonial rule.
The sketches are convulsed with outrage; there’s
The sketches are convulsed with outrage; there’s an entire page that ripples with the anger of women protesters, who stand at their balconies and pelt the police with potatoes. The Royal Garhwal Rifles defy orders and lay down their arms, instigating a horrific attack by the City Disturbance Column. “Qissa Khwani, the market of storytellers, ran red with blood as bullets flew around for hours,” states the text that accompanies the sketch of a felled Khudai Khidmatgar, lying against a backdrop of buildings and a clocktower in the marketplace.
View this post on Instagram A post shared by A Suitable Agency (@asuitableagency) Archival quality While the sketches, sometimes overlapping the black-and-white photographs, are deep caverns that unearth surprising artefacts of the anti-colonial movement, the text rarely moves beyond the obvious. Each section commences with an expository introduction, telling the reader about Gandhi’s Hind Swaraj or the Salt March of 1930 or the friendship between Gandhi and Bacha Khan.
The tone is preachy; the sentences, factually ripe but passionless. When We Are Strangers is well-intentioned in its attempt to recreate the resistance to the colonisers, reintroduce known revolutionaries, and brith unfamiliar ones. It seems eager to work as a modern parable, promoting love between Hindus and Muslims through the characters of Sita and Mahmud. The device (the word is a death-knell, when it refers to protagonists) feels overused.
The graphic novel, designed by Argentinian artist Verónica
The graphic novel, designed by Argentinian artist Verónica Borsani, has text boxes that look like scraps of paper riddled with tape. Occasionally, a drawing may appear on a paper fragment, heightening its archival quality, its texture of recorded history that has resurfaced to educate, and instruct. When We Are Strangers does both with an enthusiasm that has turned a striking visual chronicle into a preachy pamphlet.
When We Are Strangers Vazira Zamindar & Sarnath Banerjee Penguin India ₹699 The reviewer is the author of two critically-acclaimed novels. View this post on Instagram A post shared by A Suitable Agency (@asuitableagency) When We Are Strangers Vazira Zamindar & Sarnath Banerjee Penguin India ₹699
