Saurav Mohapatra’s Mumbai Confidential (Penguin Inked, Rs. 499) tells the story of Arjun Kadam, the rising star in Mumbai police who goes into a downward spiral of depression and substance abuse when tragedy strikes. Five years later, life gives him another chance. The gritty graphic novel follows Arjun’s journey as he tries to solve a hit-and-run case and opens a can of worms in the process.
The 37-year-old “author, artist and bona fide geek,” who grew up in Bhubaneshwar, graduated from IIT Kharagpur and is presently living in California, talks about his fascination for comics and noir. Describing himself as a “cautious optimist,” Saurav talks of his fascination for noir, which represents “the slow unravelling of the human psyche. As life piles on, we become driven more and more by our reptilian brain and our actions dig a deeper hole for us. This entropy spiral is dramatic gold.”
Excerpts from an interview.
Did you always want to write graphic novels?
I was fascinated by visual storytelling. I grew up with standard Nineties Indian kid fare Tintin, Asterix, Phantom, Mandrake and Indrajal. I reconnected with comics after marriage as my wife is a big-time comic buff. Before I knew it I was writing comics (only because I suck at drawing them).
Could you tell us something about your work in Witchblade and Virgin?
I did a bunch of books for Virgin Comics. It sort of just happened. I had sent a cold pitch to Gotham Chopra, EiC of Virgin Comics and he gave me a writing gig co-writing India Authentic with Deepak Chopra. I kept on writing for them and at one point I was simultaneously doing three monthlies ( Devi , Sadhu and India Authentic ) and a bunch of one-shots such as Mumbai Macguffin and Jimmy Zhingchak etc. Ron Marz was my editor on Devi and Sadhu . He mentored me and helped me develop as a writer.
What are the pros and cons of working on a graphic novel?
I always viewed working on comics as equivalent to working on a big budget movie. You get the canvas and scope of an epic movie as well as the personal connection of a book. The only downside is finding and convincing the right artist to work with you.
How did Mumbai Confidential come to be?
MC was born out of the desire to upgrade the visual experience of both crime comics and the encounter cop/Mumbai noir subgenre. We started out trying to create something which had the vibe and timbre of Sin City, LA Confidential but is firmly rooted in aamchi Mumbai. That and the fact that I’ve been a big fan of vernacular pulp crime pocketbooks since I can remember.
We put all that we loved about comics, crime-noir, Bollywood and pulp crime fiction and kept on stirring it till we liked what we saw.
Could you comment on the title?
When Vivek (Shinde, artist) and I developed MC , we pitched it as a blend of gritty western crime-noir with the seminal Bollywood encounter cop movie. We have always used the elevator pitch of Ab Tak Chhappan meets Sin City for MC .
How did the transatlantic logistics work?
It was hard at first. But Vivek and I developed a great working relationship over the three-and-half years it took to develop the book. Fun fact: we have never met in person. We used all the technology available from Skype to Dropbox to Google Docs for collaboration. When all else would fail, we'd just talk on the phone for hours trying to nail the look and the vibe of the book.
Samit Basu and Anurag Kashyap have nice things to say about MC …
Samit and I started off writing comics for Virgin. He was a big author by then and I was starting out. We kept on talking via email and Skype as I was taking over from him on Devi . We realised we have very similar tastes and share a very similar healthy cynical worldview full of snarky goodness. Samit supported MC from day one.
Anurag Kashyap! That was a big highlight. I’m a big fan of Mr. Kashyap’s body of work. When MC hardcover edition was coming out in the US, I tweeted to him about the book. To my surprise, he was already aware of the book and was tracking it. He invited me to Sundance film festival and I met him there. We discussed the book, comic books and crime-noir all morning. It was the highpoint of my career as an author. He was kind enough to give us a blurb for the book.
Dirty cops, terrorists and Bollywood, it almost seems like every story set in Mumbai has to have these elements. Comment
Don't forget the seedy underbelly of Dharavi! I think the allure for a story teller is in the dichotomy of the Bombay of glitz, glamour and business with the Mumbai that everyday people live in. These have become handy shorthand for describing what lurks beneath the veneer.
Does Mumbai lend itself easily to noir?
Noir lives in shades of grey. It is the study of people coming apart at seams, like a raggedy thread pulled from a sweater till the whole thing unravels.
Mumbai “IS” noir. There is a simultaneous struggle at all levels of the Maslow Pyramid. When creating MC , we knew one thing from the get-go: Mumbai is the lead character of Mumbai Confidential .
Can you comment on the structure and palate of MC?
MC uses a non-linear structure. It begins in media res. When I was creating a story, I realised that there is no way I can surprise the readers of today.
They have seen all the twists, all the sleights of hand and all the tropes. So Vivek and I made a conscious decision to make MC more of a journey than a destination. The scrambled timeline helped us to plant clues and hints and callouts to seminal movies in the background and even foreshadow events to come. You can reread MC (knowing how it ends) and find little Easter eggs in the background that will make sense the second time around.
The colour scheme/palette was fixed for each timeline, a homage to Anurag Kashyap’s use of the same technique in Black Friday .
What next?
We're working on a loose sequel called Mumbai Midnight , still early days on that. Apart from that I just did a graphic novel on the legend of Abhimanyu called Way of the Warrior - again an attempt to provide a cinematic upgrade to something that I believe hasn't received a proper dramatic treatment.
I’m researching for a book set in pre-World War I Mumbai and involves an Indian policeman trying to solve a series of murders in the red light district of Kamathipura.
