Moon Over Powerpolis

That meander doesnt totally work. Ghosh has a hand for caricature,but his eye for character is less sure. Yes,Young Man A is an idealist with pretensions to creativity. Yes,Young Man B is a total compromise,willing to work within the system. Naturally,they wind up disagreeing,but hardly interestingly. Whenever Ghosh tries to foreground a personal narrative,it appears grafted-on and awkward. Even when it seems that the links between the foreground and the crowded,lovingly detailed background are there for the forging surely conflict between a systems-person and a quasi-anarchist should be able to provide emotional heft to a backstory about JPs quasi-batty Total Revolution movement.

Perhaps it is because of our well-known aversion to sideways looks at our historical figures that we have to suffer through cutesy names for JP,Mrs Gandhi,her sons and so on. Rushdie-like slyness is tiring even when Rushdie does it; not least among Our Salmans crimes is that he seems to have ensured that such puerile playfulness has become the hallmark of anything set in near-contemporary India. In this case,Prince for Sanjay is hardly a stretch; the Prophet for JP does at least convey some of the grandeur,dogmatic certainty and moral authority of the man. But Moon for Indira Gandhi? It conveys nothing. And Ghoshs visual sensibility,so sure with cityscapes and dingy sarkari interiors,stumbles when it comes to Mrs Gandhi: everywhere he dresses her up in a childish,summer frock,heavy-handedly reminding us of her pictures as a naïve young girl. Nothing but Daddys daughter,we are encouraged to think. Daddy himself is called The Barrister and we are told that he had his clothes drycleaned in Geneva. Of course,that wasnt Jawaharlal but Motilal,and it was laundering,not drycleaning,and in Paris,not Geneva. Thats the story that inspired legendary New Yorker humorist S.J. Perelman to write one of his finest pieces,an imagined correspondence between Nehru Seniormost and his Left Bank dhobi entitled No Starch in the Dhoti,Sil Vous Plait.

It is when Ghoshs ambition leads him to long explicatory backstories for people like Moon that you realise how very wordy this book is,graphic novel or not. These are the weakest parts of the book. More,they reveal the gaping inadequacy of Indias its-an-allegory-dont-burn-my-book norm: it means we dont trust the details as much as we should. Did people really tune into the Allahabad trial of Mrs Gandhi that sparked the declaration of Emergency on television? Are the quotes put in the Prophets mouth actually JPs words? Perhaps they are. But should I have to google them to find out? The tired get-out clause Why so serious? This is fiction! Stop fetishising Truth and History and all that claptrap! simply doesnt apply when a book is as openly an attempt to inform,educate and awaken as this one is,written quite evidently to restore to our consciousness a period we find it convenient to forget or dismiss as an aberration.

But none of this should take away from the magnitude of Ghoshs achievement. Theres nothing quite like a graphic novel for conveying being-thereness; and this one seamlessly blends the familiar from the archive JP sitting and addressing the giant Patna Gandhi Maidan rally,Richard Nixon standing uncomfortably next to Mrs Gandhi with the pop culture of the time Rafi,Sholay and imaginative flourishes Youth Congressi Smiling Saviours wearing sinister Alan Mooresque masks. An achievement all the more difficult given that,because of the informal blackout of this period in our historical imagination,we simply dont have the visual vocabulary that makes the effort easier.

Even the flatness of the characters doesnt stop them from jumping off the page when you start thinking of them as representations of the people Emergency produced: the village goon using the JP movement to get into populist politics; the Youth Congressman who just wanted to make a difference,and slogged upwards through the Congress later.

And it is towards the end that we realise what Delhi Calm is actually supposed to mean. Theres a magnificent sequence,as Turkman Gates shanties are demolished,one of Emergencys most memorable aggressions. One resident stands by,listening to the Indian cricket team winning in the West Indies on the transistor he was given for being sterilised. A few panels later,Ghosh has a character tell us that Emergency will never happen again,but Delhi,Powerpolis,will just get cleverer,calmer,about its aggressions,its demolitions. You may not agree. Im not sure I do. But Ghoshs sepia-tinted glimpses of the sepia-tinted origins of todays power structure are well worth starting an argument over.