ABSTRACT
This short piece is an account of the making of the graphic novel, Kangal Malsat (/War Cry of the Beggars, Bengali, 2013), designed, written and illustrated by the author (The graphic novel was described as the ‘first’ graphic work in Bengali by the popular press, and featured on the bestseller’s list). It presents a short introduction to the primary text, a Bengali novel by Nabarun Bhattacharya who was one of the most influential and controversial authors of recent times. The plot of Kangal Malsat (2002) presents the exploits of the Fyatarus/Flying Men and the Choktars/Black magicians. The article draws attention to the contexts within which the cult of Fyatarus emerged. It elaborates on the ways in which the narrative complexity and the political content of the literary text were adapted into a sequential art form, specifically, into a popular genre-like graphic novel. It focuses on the manner in which a transgressive style and three-way exchange between literary text, cinema and sequential art was achieved as Mukherjee worked in tandem with the cinematic adaption of the same text (by Suman Mukhopadhyay, in 2013). The article reflects upon such manifold transactions, and shows in what way a dense and polymorphous form may be forged by means of revisiting and reframing an existing text. In short, this piece discusses the dialogic, multifaceted and fluid structure of graphic narratives, its function within wider political-cultural debates and the fashion in which such exchanges may produce conditions for cultural negotiations.
