Syed Mujtaba Ali had chronicled Berlin and its diverse residents whom he encountered during his stay as a Ph.D scholar in the mid-1930s. Ali’s anthology of anecdotal short stories, Chachakahini, is the inspiration behind a series of character sketches Sarnath Banerjee is planning.
The graphic novelist, who teaches narrative images at the Berlin University of the Arts, has settled in Germany for 15 years now but returns regularly to the BB Block residence of his parents for short stays.
But he has been unable to make it back after his December visit to attend the launch of the German pavilion where the first of his character sketches is being exhibited as what he calls “radio comics”.
The central character seen playing table tennis in multiple sketches in the pavilion is Hyen Chien Nguyen, whom Banerjee refers to as prashanto jodhha, as he is “a peaceful chap”. “O amar parar lok. I have been seeing him play table tennis for five years now, without any improvement. Of course, I have fictionalised him a bit,” Banerjee tells The Telegraph Salt Lake over phone from Berlin.
He recalls the very local accounts that Ali penned on his stay in Germany on a Humboldt scholarship. “Chachakahini stands out for the transfer of metaphoric context. Ali would compare the smoke during Oktoberfest in Munich with the scent of incense burning in the cowsheds of Mymensingh. Groups of Bengali students would be spotted chatting in India House in Berlin and Ali wrote of the multicultural neighbourhood emptying out when the fiery aroma of lonka phoron would waft out of their kitchens,” he recalled reading.
Banerjee is inspired by Mujtaba Ali’s take on the coexistence of people from different cultures. “There used to be little interaction between them and Ali believed that social integration was not an absolute necessity,” Banerjee says. “Nowadays, there is a bid to integrate the newcomers. One has to even do a course to become German,” he adds.
Banerjee explored the extent to which the assimilation takes place, with a humorous take on migrant parents who try to foist their own ideas on their children who, despite being non-Germans, were growing up as German speakers.
Banerjee has received backing from Goethe-Institut Kolkata. “I will create eight such pen sketches for them. They wanted to exhibit the first at the Book Fair.”
Banerjee accepts that, unlike his generation, the next generations are averse to reading. “But will story-telling also end? Certainly not. So it is up to us to figure out new ways of telling stories.” He has hit upon a combination of “lazy animation” involving minimal but smart drawing and audio. “I am inspired by radio. I want to combine comics with an element of performance or theatre.”
So the story of the inept but sincere Vietnamese table tennis player in his southeast Berlin neighbourhood has been told in his recorded voice which one can put on a headphone to hear while watching a series of “lazy animations” play out on the screen in front.
The series, he points out, is a part of his endeavour as an author to hold up a mirror of reality to break the myths surrounding the life of settlers in the West, which most non-resident Indians take care to paint a rosy picture of back home.
Though Banerjee cannot attend, his mother Chandra Banerjee is eager to visit the Book Fair to watch her son’s work on a large canvas. “I will go with members of our performance group,” said the 71-year-old, who is active in the local cultural circuit.