What do you love the most about graphic novel as a literary form?
Only a graphic novel is compared to the combination of words and pictures. Creating a language that lies within the interaction between the text and the image, which I like the most. There are many ways to do this, and there are many layers of complexity. I actually be interested in it as a businessman with a reader. I look at each of my books – whether it is Bangalore, The Alakzar, or Lorme Mirroyer – As an opportunity to experiment and play with this language. I see comics not in paper translated cinema but as a literary form with my unique possibilities.
Do you use the words ‘Comic Book’ and ‘Graphic Novel’?
(Laughing) I know why you are asking me this question. There are some people who touch a lot about the word that is used. I think this is just an expression of their pride. For me, this is too much the same thing that is label in different ways. Typically, people prefer to refer to my books as graphic novels due to their format, size, length and number of pages.
Which graphic novelists do you see?
As a child in the early 1990s, I read French and Belgian comic books. In my teenage age, when I started thinking seriously about what I would like to do in terms of my education and my career, I found new ways to attract and tell stories beyond the boxes that were banned for comic books. The medium was no longer addressing only children or sometimes growing adults. It was also for adults interested in social issues, intimacy and philosophy. I look at people like David B, Margen Satropi, who Sacco and Chris Ware.
When I hear the word ‘novel’, fiction is what comes to mind. But the works of graphic non-fiction are also called graphic novels these days.
I get my inspiration from real life, so my non-story is also personal in a way. I like to blur these classifications and categories. For example, in Alkaar, I tell the story of migrant workers working hard at a construction site in Bangalore. Their job is to construct a residential complex on an empty plot. The book addresses social facts, but I almost made it like imagination in the sense that I do not interfere in the story as a researcher. I do not represent myself. I tell the story using the facts that I saw, and the data I collected on the area.
Your two books are scheduled in India. How did that happen?
Soon after my education in France, I moved to Bangalore and taught at a design school from 2013 to 2018. Being in India was a great opportunity to see things from a different perspective. When you live somewhere, your interaction with one place and people is different how it will be as a passenger. Initially, I thought I would be there for a year. It turned into two, and finally I ended staying for five years.
I was in my early twenty -seventh position, and just began to mastered the skills to produce some publications. Since I was in India, my environment provided the material with which I worked. I think of my book Bangalore as a travelogue because it is about my discovery of India. It is a picture of the city through its public places. The gaze is more exterior. Alakzar does not look at the city overall. It focuses on a small plot of land, and people working there.
What kind of moral questions came for you, telling the stories of construction workers? When the people of the West come to the colonized countries in the east, there is a worry about how people can see their work, and to take some care about not leaving the local people. Is this something you have dealt with?
Bangalore was my first book. I was young and urged to make something, so I was thinking more about my right to represent as an artist. You can say that there was some kind of right. I had a real hunger to capture the city.
Through the process of making that book, I started asking myself more questions. The process continued after the book was published in France, and I started listening to the reactions and received the response. Some parts of it were published in a magazine in India. Over time, I was more interested in post -colonial issues and also read Edward Saeed’s book Orientalism. This helped me understand the political and intellectual discourse, and it was also found out where I stood.
I do not believe that people who come from the West should not be able to talk about the East, or that men should not portray female characters. How things happen. It comes down only for that. I also want us to have more stories with an eastern gaze in the west.
In addition, there are stories that are there for grabbing there. If there were already many stories representing construction workers, perhaps I would not have felt the need to document them in alkaar. I felt that most Indians in my environment did not know much about construction workers, which was completely separated to live in a world.
I was quite cautious about doing things correctly, not to silence anyone, and was not speaking to anyone. I was trying to become a voice porter or voice career. I found an Indian friend with a background in dynasty to help me documentation. Other friends helped with interpretation and translation. We talked a lot about the correct questions to ask workers, and how to portray them. I also shared my storyboard and sketch with workers and collected their reaction when I was in India. When I went back to France, and was completing my work AlkaarI was in touch on phone calls and WhatsApp.
I did not want it to be read only by French people, so I was thrilled when Comics India came on board to publish the Indian version. When we had a launch in Bangalore, Mehbob and Rafiq, the book was on stage with me and had the opportunity to represent themselves and interact with most upper class Bangalores.
Why do we not have more books about construction workers? Is there a lack of knowledge about their lives related to division of religion and caste in India?
Yes, I mean one of the factors can be. But it can also be a question of forgetting worldly because it is right in front of our nose and we do not see it anymore. Construction sites are everywhere in India as cities are developing rapidly. Initially, I wanted to study a case at various construction sites and made a more purposeful picture but then I left it. For me, it came down to be a book about some characters. They are humans with struggles set by their profession and class, but their life is more than this. Construction work is only a part of their identity. Many of them come to the cities as there is a lack of opportunities in the villages. They build houses with scratches for other people but do not have permanent housing. By the time he turns 40, his body becomes weak with physical exertion. Their goal is to invest small money that they manage to save and start a small business, which does not require too much physical work.
How different is the life of construction workers in India and France?
The main difference is that, unlike India, construction workers in France – who come from Portugal and Eastern Europe – do not live at construction sites. There is a rented house to go to the vast majority of migrants. From the point of view of a story, it was interesting to see how the lines between the individual and the professional became blurred because all my characters lived in Alakzar where they worked. They almost did not get out of the site. This may be one of the reasons that he was misunderstood by the rest of the society.
Did you have any conversation on food?
Yes, I ate with them. When I had to go away for a few months, we celebrated a little. We also had tea a few times. We could not have long conversations because I could not bother him so much during his work hours. I was allowed to inspect them and talk when they were independent. There was more time to talk on evening and Sunday. I told the contractor that I was an architecture student on an internship, and was interested in learning about construction techniques. I don’t think if I knew that I was interested in the lives of construction workers, I would be allowed. Even seeing how people went, saw each other, and conversed, I gave me such a non-verbal information about them, which I could use to build my characters later.
Listen: Podcast with books and author Simon Lamore
Tell us about your new books L’Homme Miror And In the land of lama,
L’Homme Miror The city has a workholic single mother who goes to rural areas with her son when a property comes to sell. He has to get rid of the items that belonged to the previous owner. While going through them, this woman, her son and her parents start making her impressions. What they see in it shows who they are.
It was a great pleasure to collaborate with Pama Wangchuk Dorji – on the land of a journalist – Lama located in Sikkim. The comic book is set with Tibet with Sikkim’s Frontier in the late 1960s. This sipoy takes inspiration from the story of Harbhajan Singh. He was an Indian Army soldier, who died in 1968 due to the hard terrain and extreme weather, but he continues to live through myths and legends that move around him.
Chintan Girish Modi is a journalist, teacher and literary critic. He is @Chintanwriting on Instagram and X.
