picture this: Sample pages from Underground Comics (above and top right); Rahul Pandita and a caricature of Sharad Sharma (left)

There are incidents and incidents. Some may be of little consequence to the fabric of life, but get reported widely through the media. Other, anonymous incidents, sometimes change the course of one?s life. These are experiences that people draw on ? as Sharad Sharma and Rahul Pandita did.

Meeting Irom Sharmila Devi in Manipur was one such experience for Pandita. It moved him so much that he teamed up with Sharma to start a unique rural communications movement. The two ex-mediamen not only use comics to reach across to people and effect social change, they even teach people living in villages to draw caricatures and explain issues concerning them. Now, Sharma and Pandita have come out with a series of comic booklets ? the first about the Manipuri Meira Peibis movement ? which Pandita says was inspired by his meeting with Sharmila Devi four years ago.

Twenty-nine-year-old Pandita, then a correspondent for Zee News just back from covering the Kargil War, was on a media fellowship programme to Manipur when he met this ?prisoner of conscience,? who has been on a hunger strike since November 2000 to protest the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA). When he went to meet her, he found her being force-fed through her nose by the authorities. ?She?s been in custody for the last four years, and every 15 days, she is brought before the magistrate, who asks her to sign a bail application. And she refuses every time, thus appealing to the conscience of the authorities,? explains Pandita.

Sharmila Devi will not end her hunger strike until the AFSPA is repealed in Manipur. But Pandita and Sharma realised there were many more such courageous women who lived and died in anonymity. Underground Comics? first issue on the Meira Peibis, a group of mothers campaigning against substance abuse, was a tribute to such women.

A pocket-size 24-panel booklet with a single black and white illustration on every page and a few words of text, Underground Comics at first glance isn?t anything to write home about. Even the logo is a non-descript one, a red post office seal-like mark in one corner saying ?Underground Comics 2004?. Then, you notice what the visuals are all about. It talks about what has been going on in Manipur, from the naked protests of women against the AFSPA following the death of Thangjam Manorama Devi earlier this year, to the coming together of hundreds of women to rid their men of two of the worst vices in the state ? alcoholism and drug abuse.

In the early Seventies, unemployment and related problems among the youth in Manipur pushed them towards alcohol and drugs. When the women decided enough was enough, they took to the streets. They formed groups which patrolled streets at night carrying torches. They would beat up anyone who was found drunk or drugged on the streets, and those who didn?t learn their lesson even after that would be sent to counselling and de-addiction centres. Underground Comics? representation of the Meira Peibis, the duo feels, will at least make people aware of the mothers? movement.

The Northeast had always fascinated Sharma and Pandita. ?Over endless cups of tea in office, we talked about how our lives were ruled by what was happening in Parliament, or the metros, and nothing else. Gradually, it seemed like we would end up being the David Dhawans of journalism, reporting on inconsequential incidents day after day. It was then that Sharad and I realised we had to do something about the Northeast, one of the most neglected areas of our country,? says Pandita. Sharma, the political graphics designer with the news channel since 1999, was already part of a rural communications movement in eastern India. He was active with Charkha, a grassroots-media interface programme started by the late Assam-based activist Sanjoy Ghose.

It was while Sharma was travelling through the interiors of states such as Assam, Mizoram, Nagaland and Jharkhand, that he started a wall poster movement. Near Chaibasa in Jharkhand, he urged tribal artists to represent issues such as dowry, alcoholism and female foeticide, which are rampant in the state, through their drawings. The movement was called Saiyyam Mascal (Own Voice).

In 2002, he founded the Indian chapter of World Comics, a Finland-based organisation that uses comics as a medium of social change. World Comics India now operates even in the remote, tribal and desert areas of Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Jharkhand and the Northeast.

Sharma, now 32, hails from Rajasthan and had even worked as a cartoonist for a local paper in Jaipur before he moved to Delhi as a freelance cartoonist for The Hindustan Times, Navbharat Times and Outlook. He quit Zee News in 2002, and now devotes all his time to his artwork and travelling across the country to conduct workshops on cartoons.

?The idea behind the comics movement is that people in villages respond more readily to simple messages,? he says. A few lines and words say a lot more to the semi-literate people than lengthy discourses. In fact, a woman sarpanch in one of the villages in Rajasthan that Sharma visited drew out the story of her life, a moving tale of how her husband had forced her to run for the post of the village sarpanch, all the while expecting to ghost-rule the village himself. She would have none of that, and mobilised the women to form a strong force. Told in four panels and a few blurbs, it forms the easiest way to understand a long story of extreme oppression. A condition that prevails in many other villages across the country.

For Pandita, meanwhile, there was no looking back after his Manipur visit. While he was wondering how to go about his mission of social awareness, he came across an illustrated document called ?Palestine?. Drawn and written by a Maltese journalist called Joe Sacco, the illustrated document (a comic book of sorts) was an experiment to explain the Israel-Palestine crisis, and won critical acclaim all over the world, including recognition by the prestigious MacArthur Foundation. Pandita, a winner of Oxford Bookstore?s e-author prize for his yet-unpublished novel, immediately realised how he could put his writing skills to use. He quit his job, teamed up with Sharma, and Underground Comics was born.

Lack of funding prompted Pandita to take up another job a few months ago. ?But the job is of secondary importance to me. This is what I am passionate about,? he says. Both Sharma and Pandita are lucky to have unstinted family support. In fact, Sharma operates from home, a two-room flat in Mayur Vihar in East Delhi where he has used up a room to produce his comic books, and lives in the other with his wife and daughter.

For now, Underground Comics come free, and the expenses are borne by the duo. They insist that the costs of production are nominal, although conventional comics would have to involve layout artists, background artists, pencillers, inkers, writers, and other people. On the other hand, Underground Comics is formed out of Sharma taking an A4 size sheet of paper and drawing on it, and Pandita adding the text, the black-and-white format significantly different from conventional comic books. Then, they get a printout of the product, and photocopy the pages, to staple them and form a booklet. ?We are distributing the comic books through NGOs and public service organisations,? says Pandita. Outfits such as the Gandhi Darshan Smriti of Chandigarh and Young Mizo Association of Mizoram, among others, have taken up the cause of distribution. Soon, however, the duo plans to put up the booklets for sale, at a nominal price of Rs 2 each.

The next issue of Underground Comics will draw a parallel between the war in Iraq and the Kashmir insurgency. ?We want to spearhead a comics renaissance in India,? says Pandita, ruing the fact that all the comic strips printed in newspapers and magazines are syndicated comics, and hardly any of these are Indian. For now, they go back to their storyboards.