Yukichi Yamamatsu at the literary session. Picture by Rashbehari Das

Delhi belly is the immediate India connect for mangaka Yukichi Yamamatsu, here to promote the English translation of an autobiographical book on his 2004 trip to India to translate and sell a Hindi Manga.

The author of Stupid Man Goes to India was the guest at a mini lit session at Galerie 88 on Monday organised by Gameplan after the success of the Calcutta Literary Meet, which it held in association with The Telegraph.

A request to draw one defining image of his stay in India had Yukichi scratching his head and laughing. The sketch that emerged on the white board showed a terrified looking man holding his stomach in an overflowing bathroom. “My sigmoid colon was removed because of cancer. So, I cannot check my bowel movements. All through the trip, I was petrified where I would find my next clean bathroom,” explained the 56-year-old author.

From the perils of walking the streets of Delhi and digesting spicy food to a first-hand experience of selling sellotape at Chor Bazaar and being duped every other second — Stupid Man… has it all.

The matter of fact, detailed and candid account of India through the wary eyes of an outsider makes one wonder how Yukichi survived without knowing a single syllable of English or Hindi.

“I was poor. I needed to make money,” Yukichi admitted, adding that he chose India because manga was yet to gain popularity here, unlike China or the West, where the markets are saturated.

But a shoestring budget, a desire to work with Hindi rather than English and his notion that “poor people are more accessible and adaptable than the rich” are what became his undoing. “I was disheartened. It was very difficult for me, not only did I not get what I wanted, but life here was very different from what I was used to. But I took it as a challenge and even came back a second time,” Yukichi said.

The session ended with a talk on the hows and whys of manga from its varied genres and colourless pages to why it has to be read from right to left and the career prospects of manga artists.

“When I heard a manga artist was in town, I just had to come. I love reading manga and I draw all the time. I am planning to learn Japanese so that I can read the originals,” said 15-year-old Priyanka Gupta of Modern High School, who came with all her manga artwork. Yukichi was in the city for a manga workshop conducted by Kriyetic Comics and Graphics studio.

Malavika Banerjee, the brain behind the Calcutta Literary Meet, promised more such sessions. “We don’t read books once a year, why should these sessions be annual? It is also impossible to accommodate so many things in six days. So we plan to keep holding these sessions,” she said.