Graphic novel depicting life in city to hit stores on July 28

After the success of their first city-centric comic on Hyderabad, Syenagiri will launch their second graphic novel based on Bengaluru from their Every City is a Story initiative.

Jai Undurti, creative head of Syenagiri, said the team wanted to portray the city as it is and through the eyes of the artists living in Bengaluru.

“Bengaluru, like any other great city, is a state of the mind, so we wanted to understand the state of the mind of the city. This is what we have tried exploring in this graphic novel series,” he said, explaining how it was different from getting city information online or from a tourist guide.

“All information is available at a click, and it is not needed. The thing that is required is imagination,” Undurti said.

The Bengaluru edition of the graphic novel has nine stories. Syenagiri normally ropes in artists and writers from the city to give it a personal take.

“The stories in the novel are not about Bengaluru, but can only be written in Bengaluru. They are the creators’ personal ideas or vision of Bengaluru,” said Undurti

Bangalore: A Graphic Novel, has been on Kindle for the past five months, the illustrators finished work on it eight months ago. 

Asked why Bengaluru was chosen as the second city over the likes of Mumbai, Delhi and Kolkata, Undurti said these cities have been written about extensively and they wanted to give their take on cities which were not talked about enough.

“Another reason why we chose Bengaluru, is due to the huge response we got at Comic-con and this was very heartening. The city also has a huge pool of creators who are not originally from here, but have been here all their lives and have seen the city through their eyes. Plus, the citizens were also so enthusiastic and hence we just had to choose Bengaluru,” said Undurti, the author of The Robots of Dharma. 

Gaining popularity
“Graphic novels are slowly gaining popularity across India. Not many people knew about graphic novels or comics before. Now, everyone knows who a graphic novelist is and what he or she does. This change itself is so nice to see, people did not know what I did when I started off, now everyone knows.”

The next place on which Syenagiri will make a graphic novel is, Goa. The book will be launched at Goobe’s Book Republic on July 28 and is priced at Rs 400.