Manga is the Japanese word for “comics”, which cover a whole range of genres: Action, romance, sports, historical drama, comedy, fantasy, mystery, horror and sex. A post World War II phenomenon, manga has now become a $4 billion industry globally, with cult followers in Europe, the US, Asia and elsewhere. But that “elsewhere” has not included India — until now, at least. And one of the reasons is that the traditional format of manga comics is from back to front, and from right to left, which obviously makes it challenging for the Indian reader.
Yukichi Yamamatsu was a 50-year-old unemployed manga artist. In 2003, evidently having run out of options — and inspired by the bizarre story of a Japanese salesman who went to India to sell electric rice cookers in Indian villages where there was no electricity — he decided that he, too, would go to India to draw, publish and sell his manga comics there. As the blurb on the page says “That's it! If I take manga there, I'm sure to be able to sell it!” What follows is Yamamatsu's sad-funny adventures on the mean streets of Delhi, living life at zero level.
The story begins with the author's arrival at Delhi airport at midnight, armed with not much more than his “Point-to” travel phrase-book and the limited savings that would support him for the next few months. You don't have to be a genius to imagine what happened next. He was picked up by two burly touts in a goods van and driven all over town through the night to be finally dumped, bewildered, in some rip-off flea-pit hotel. The blurbs say it all:
“I had no interest in sightseeing, so I refused … kept saying no in as many ways as I could. NO! NA! NOO! NO WAY!”
“The streets were dirty and sticky. There was a sludgy stink. There were huge turds on the ground. WHOA!”
“The driver demanded a ‘guide' fee. Rs.50.”
“Before, the room rate was Rs.1,700… now just to extend it's Rs.1,900. It doesn't make sense!”
“… in the end I bought the cheapest tea there for Rs.800. BUT WHERE AM I GONNA DRINK THIS?”
“AAARGHHH!”
And that was just the first few days. The book then followsYamamatsu's misadventures over the rest of his six-month stay in Delhi. It reads like the script of one of those weird Japanese reality TV shows, in which the participant is put through all kinds of punishments, tortures and humiliations for the amusement of the audience.
Trials and errors
Having arrived in India, knowing only that “It is the birthplace of the Buddha, Gandhi and Subash Chandra Bose”, Yamamatsu makes a swift, hard landing. Ripped off by a variety of sleazy hotels, auto-walas, touts and tourist traps in the first few days, he eventually finds himself a dingy paying guest lodging in the gullies of Paharganj. There, after weeks of trials and errors he manages to create his manga comic, with the assistance of his landlord's klutzyson. Then, after much bickering and shouting, he manages to get the manga printed by one of the local hole-in-the-wall printing presses. And then — as the invisible director of the Cosmic TV Reality Show raises the level of pain and humiliation — he finally attempts to hawk his new manga on the footpaths and railway compartments of Delhi. Along the way, he bravely learns to speak Hindi; invents and peddles an ingenious cellotape dispenser in an attempt to make a little money; even makes a pathetic exploratory foray into a GB Road whore-house.
Let's face it, despite all the tourist blah-blah about “Incredible India”, India is not a particularly easy country for a foreign visitor to handle, compared with other Asian countries like, say, Thailand, Malaysia, Philippines or Sri Lanka. The tourist needs to be insulated from the hard realities of life by the 3-star hotel circuit, at least (if not the 5-star hotel circuit). And that is an advantage Yamamatsu, on his limited budget, did not have. Another particular problem was that he was Japanese, which means that he was culturally about as different from us Indians as it is possible to be, coming from a society where order, harmony, politeness and reliability are prized above all things.
Cancer survivor
Another peculiar handicap was that he was a cancer survivor, who'd had half his digestive system removed — as a result of which he never knew when his bowels would activate. And, given the status of India's public toilets, that couldn't have made life any easier for him.
One can be polite and say that Stupid guy goes to India is tragic, comic or even heroic. But let me be honest: It's the most depressing thing I have read in a long, long time. For those of us who like to think of India as the new global super-power, it's a useful reality check.
