Book Review: Munnu by Malik Sajad
Quote: 'Mamma, here Kashmiri apples . . . I mean Chinese pears. They're good.Why did you put your life at risk for these pears? Why didn't you buy me some poison for good measure, huh? Next time for sure.'Mamma was right the fruit imposed a curfew on her dry cough.
I attended a workshop/seminar on graphic novels two years back, that's where I happened to learn about the work happening in 'Indian scene', though I mostly disagreed with Academia's observation there, I came home with a lot of information on creators to look for.
Malik Sajad's Munnu made the biggest hue and cry in the sessions. Firstly his work was compared to Maus, secondly, his political-narrative position as a Kashmiri appealed to a lot. After hearing him talk about his art and politics, I wanted to read his book.
Munnu should not be compared to Maus. Yes instead of illustrating Kashmiri people in their human form, he chose to draw them as the endangered Hangul deer. An artistic move which gets explained at the end of the book.
Of course, there is anger against the Indian Government and the atrocities it executes through the army. The frustration of a young Munnu through the '90s and working as a political cartoonist in his teen is transferred well onto the reader. The anger I felt when Munnu is put in lockup in Delhi as a terrorist, just because he was Kashmiri and trying to send his daily comic strip back home via the internet! I felt even more frustrated when Munnu and his mother navigate through the curfew on a bike to remove her stitches at the hospital.
It's a coming of age story, it's an 'autographic', but it's story of a narrator who is getting disillusioned by the government that treats him like a second-class citizen, by the rebellion that sees him a traitor, by the confused population that knows it wants peace but has no means, and by his own accommodating nature to deaths around him.
This is also a story of a family that tries to live unharmed. I especially loved Mamma and Papa's relationship on how they try to raise their kids free of any influences. When the mystery of how flirty loafer Imtiyaz manages to get expensive toffees to give girls is solved, it was bittersweet, an irony in every sense. Munnu learning woodcarving and learning the art and eventually innocently drawing nude art of his teacher, made me guilty of my own ignorance.
I also relate to his frustration with the intellectuals that always engage in talks, the journalist that prowl as experts, and the people in power. No one asks the common man what he wants! And in some of the panels, the Common Man of R.K Laxman makes stereotypical assumptions about Munnu too.
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