Nostalgia runs through Sarnath Banerjee’s latest graphic novel, Absolute Jafar, his sixth work. Since the mid-2000s, when his first book, Corridor, came out, Banerjee has been creating works that put him at the forefront of the graphic novel landscape in India. The protagonist of the current book, Brighu Sen, was first encountered in Corridor. He is an author surrogate whose self-examination forms the core of the book.

The genre of the autobiographical graphic narrative is well established, especially in underground comics. Think of works by Robert Crumb, Julie Doucet, Art Spiegelman, Marjane Satrapi, Yoshiharu Tsuge—the list goes on. (Robert Crumb actually makes a cameo appearance in Absolute Jafar.) A more recent work is Adrian Tomine’s The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Cartoonist (2020).

Absolute Jafar is a semi-autobiographical work of fiction. The “I” first emerges in the prologue through rambling observations about why people walk, walk out, before referring to himself as an “all-weather walker”. He says he needs to get out of the house as often as he can since he is a bechain, or restless kind of person. This confession of restlessness sets the tone. It seems to offer a pre-emptive reason for the way his life unfolds, from his cross-border marriage to living as an émigré in Berlin to having a child, getting a divorce, and then coming back to the homeland. Brighu walks through his life with the studied pace of a flâneur (a figure popularised by 19th century poets like Charles Baudelaire), observing himself and the quirks of contemporary urban life.

The wordless prologue introduces the protagonist via a sequence showing the infamous government-led project of relocating the African cheetah to India. The cheetah reference is repeated in the epilogue as Brighu witnesses the animal’s apparition, alongside floating memories, during a walk. Given that the cheetah is associated with speed, the use of this motif to bookend a narrative whose dominant metaphor is leisurely walking is slightly ironic. In Absolute Jafar, the cheetah is supposed to be a metaphor for forced migration, such as the one that Brighu undertakes for the sake of his eventually unworkable Indo-Pakistan marriage. It is an uneasy, unstable metaphor, and much of the book exudes that quality of uneasiness.

The book is structured as a series of meandering vignettes strewn with cultural references, which have become a recurring feature of Banerjee’s work. We encounter the first of these at the end of the prologue: a full-page close-up of a novel Brighu has been reading, Life & Times of Michael K, by J.M.Coetzee. Next to it is a grocery list and a strip of vitamin pills. The reference to Coetzee’s book is puzzling. What are we to make of it? Is its story to be seen as a parallel to Brighu’s life in Absolute Jafar? This seems a bit of a stretch. The grocery list returns at the end as a symbol of Brighu’s heimat, the German notion of homeland that Banerjee riffs on.

“After the extended recounting of the practicalities of a cross-border marriage, the end of the relationship comes as an anti-climax. One begins to wonder what kind of person Brighu is. ”

There are other references. Popular Indian cinema features prominently. Saeed Akhtar Mirza’s 1978 film Arvind Desai ki Ajeeb Dastaan makes an extended appearance. Others include Sai Paranjpye’s 1983 film Katha, and, importantly for the book, Noorie, the Yash Chopra–produced film from 1979. Banerjee links Noorie to NORI (No Objection on Return to India), a form that Pakistani nationals in India are required to fill every year. This brings us to the main theme, the autobiographical heart of Absolute Jafar: Brighu falling in love with Mahrukh Zaidi, a globetrotting artist from Karachi; they getting married, moving to Berlin, having the child who lends his name to the book; and then the ending of the marriage.

Tonal shift

Descriptions of the bureaucratic rabbit hole that the Indo-Pakistan relationship is forced into take up much of the middle section of the book, where we learn of NORI and other quaint words. These episodes, offering an insider’s view of the absurdities underlying government functioning, are the ones that hold Absolute Jafar together. But this is also where the first-person narrative hits a wall.

The story is told entirely from Brighu’s perspective, with Mahrukh remaining a shadowy figure whose inner life is inaccessible to the reader. The ups and downs of the marriage and the move to Berlin are presented as linked to the vagaries of Indo-Pakistan politics. It is difficult to accept that the personalities of the couple played no part in shaping the marriage.

The tone shifts to self-deprecatory comedy when their son, Jafar, is born. Why did they decide to have a child? Because their friends had one. There is a comic sequence about a sperm test; semen jokes are there in Corridor too. Life goes on. Jafar grows up quickly. Then, suddenly, there is the break-up. No explanation is offered, and we do not know what Mahrukh is thinking. Brighu leaves the house, and that is that.

After the extended recounting of the practicalities of a cross-border marriage, the end of the relationship comes as an anti-climax. One begins to wonder what kind of person Brighu is. Is he a deracinated, alienated, hip urbanite? If so, it seems incongruous that he is also at relative ease with all the classes and castes of people one encounters in a city.

The book is populated by a whole bunch of side characters, many of them good-natured, “faithful” working-class people who always turn up when help is needed. Curiously, all these people seem nice to a fault. Even the government officials eventually become nice to the Indo-Pakistani couple.

What is it about Brighu’s character that allows him to build an easy rapport with all kinds of people? He seems distant from everyone, including his fledgling family. Early on in the book, he identifies with Arvind’s character from Arvind Desai ki Ajeeb Dastaan, a person afflicted with ennui, aimlessly wandering. Brighu says: “Like Arvind’s, my stories too are a bit pointless.” This self-image seems unconvincing, given how the story unfolds. An Indo-Pakistan romance is anything but pointless!

Banerjee’s artistic conventions seem to gel well with the mood of the story. In his earlier works, all his drawings were in black and white. He has since settled into a technique that relies on the mood watercolour can evoke, and it is employed to the right effect in the book. The flat colours and compositions of many panels remind one of 17th–18th century Indian manuscript paintings.

Absolute Jafar is as close to an autobiography as Banerjee has got, and one might even agree with the blurb that it is “a poignant meditation on belonging and becoming”. Yet one does not get any closer to Brighu in the course of the narrative. In the end, the extended metaphor of the relocated cheetah is the best we have to understand him. It stares at us, inscrutably.

Bharath Murthy is a comics author and an independent comics editor-publisher as part of Comix India.

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