Comicbook Review: 2 in 1 by Harsho Mohon Chattoraj

Comicbook Review: 2 in 1, a) Dark Destiny and b) Fish Tale by Harsho Mohon Chattoraj

Quote: They let us go, and we ran as fast as possible. Some distance away, Muhammad turned back to his home. But I ran on. And it feels like I've been running on forever... I so wish my family and friends were here with me.

This slim self-published comic comes with two stories, one of tragedy this nation can't forget, another a story of food culture.

Dark Destiny is a micro-history of a refugee boy, trying to survive the India-Pakistan partition. Among dying people and dead bodies, our boy is remembering how his fortunes turned and he ended up on the other side. A story of hunger, deprivation, desperation and pathos; many of us have heard from our grandparents and our parents, the horrors of partition still live and haunts the Bengali Community. So the gestures of bravery showed by few to help others then, gets its due respect in this story.

Fish Tales definitely is more nonfictive in its art and storytelling. The narrator travels through the heartland of Calcutta's fish markets and engages in conversation with fishermen and drops in little information about fishes, and observes the cultural connotations involved with the practice of fish consumption. I personally enjoyed this tale more because, I have seen the fish markets drawn: Lake Market and it's chaos is my favourite, followed by New Market's Hogg Market is a place I recently visited and Sealdah's fish Aarot is a place I accompanied a friend to. The little insights into the impacts of demonetization and wedding seasons on the supply-demand were interesting. I also loved the question about why there were no fisherwomen selling in the market like it happens in Mumbai.

My complaint again would be, the beginning of the story one from the right side of cover folio and end of the second story of the left side of the cover folio. The page quality and the print quality of the book decent. The art is realistic but painstakingly detailed with jumpcut panels, it needed breathing space for the eyes.

In eleven and ten pages, we get two different stories rooted in the same linguistics culture and geography. One is a story of nil and despair, and the other is of plenty and expectations.

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