Kari by Amruta Patil

http://epaper.navhindtimes.in/NewsDetail.aspx?storyid=10542&date=2016-08-07&pageid=1

                                                                Graphic Kari

In a world where gender definitions are being challenged and readdressed, ‘Kari’ - the graphic novel by Amruta Patil is a publishing milestone towards that utopia. It is a fictionalized reality of young adults living in smog city (Bombay), with a lesbian relationship at its center. The novel shifts through shades of relationships in multifarious hues, echoing Vikram Seth’s ‘Golden Gate’ through Californian yuppiedom. But considering the deviant forms of the two works, that’s where the similarity ends.

Kari, the butch, works through the muddles of her psyche (“The circus isn’t in my life. It’s in my head”) and finds herself in the end. This come after she ploughs through landscapes of her soul mate Ruth (who leaves her in the beginning), parents, friends, her friend Angel’s dying, and yes, cats and Lord Ganesha.  A story that begins with a failed double suicide, ends on a hopeful note - “I still love Ruthie more than anyone in the world, but I won’t be jumping off ledges for anyone anymore.” It’s through the everydayness of living life between work and home (Crystal Palace in smog city which she shares with two other girls and their boyfriends) that she unravels herself and nails back into place that which had come undone.

The evocative graphics are etched in bold black lines with grey undertones and are broken by a few coloured panels which signify optimism and light through claustrophobia. Inspiration for the sketches ranges from the cubists, Flemish still-life and the modernists (washroom panel) to pop art.  Andrew Wyeth’s painting ‘Christina’s World’ (which forms the back cover too), with a few subtle alterations, works lucidly into the storyline. Another panel with a nude painting is as provocative as Edouard Manet’s ‘Olympia’. If in the 1863 painting,  ‘Olympia’ looked the viewer in the eye, inviting them at her own terms, Amruta’s nude in front of a mirror is asking “Here I am wondering why I amn’t looking like Sean Penn”.

The linguistic vitality of the novel is what makes it a literary delight. The song that Amruta sings in her sassy, swaggering style is embellished with lyrical poetry.  She has embroidered a garden of flowers, with each blossom piping a different tune and yet seamlessly merging with others to render a beautiful poetic tapestry. Colloquial idioms blend into modern English lingo and philosophical phrasings rest on intriguing, delightful metaphors.

Although the centrality of the novel is a girl-to-girl love relationship, there are many other connections which hold together the fabric of Kari’s being - the spiky yet sustaining bond between the roomies Billu and Delna, the artsy colleague Lazarus, the ad making work-life, and above all, the poignant relationship she builds with Angel, the dying woman. It’s remarkable how Amruta weaves this thread, between the protagonist and the cancer-ridden lady, who is a cantankerous, brusque character stripped of every hypocrisy (in the face of death), and imparts Kari wordless wisdom. “Do you mind it was your dying I was drawn to?” asks Kari. “Looking for your fix of decay again, Kari – go play with people your own age”, replies Angel brusquely.  The austere, yet powerful, handling of this part of the story by the author gives it a punch that affects the reader profoundly.

The metaphors in the novel are potent and striking.  In the beginning, the fall from the top of the building ends up in the black sewer flowing all around the city. In saving Kari, the sewer makes a boatman out of her. In her dreams every night, the boatman (Kari) rows though waste waters of the city, unclogging blockages and commiserating with the discarded. Heaving mass of human activity evokes Noah’s Ark and Charon conveying souls on Styx.  It is also a descent into the recesses of the mind where the dark elements of our consciousness are confronted and unclogged, paving way to a more sustaining life.

In the end, Kari becomes Kd Lang whom she had watched on TV, during the Grammy awards in 1997, without really understanding why her heart glows with excitement. “Kd was handsome, preening. Me, I was mute, with no way to explain myself to myself or to anyone else.  But this genderless one made her feel that if she stood in a room with this creature, her heart would be in serious peril.”  The portrayal of Kari and her quest echoes the feminist search for identity on her own terms, the struggle for sexual independence, away from the patriarchal roles and images of a woman.

Here I must mention the meditations on the cityscape by Amruta. Just as New York City in ‘Bridge’ by Hart Crane and  London in ‘Wasteland’ by T S Eliot are anchors, so does Bombay in ‘Kari’ feed the drama of life. “The airlines lady who travels in the same compartment as us day after day, has bruises on her arms and face today and her eyes keep welling, but no one asks her why. Our eyes dart towards her, but we go back travelling in too much proximity. Two inches from one another and expressionless.”

 Irony surfaces at the end of reflections on life - wry comments like arrows that have found a mark. At the end of a late night party, Kari remarks, “I stare at men and women change from elegant and upright to fawning and drunk. “

In her very first attempt Amruta has succeeded in painting a canvas livened by poetry on love and life – a significant voice on writings from India!