Corridor reviewed

The Book: Corridor
Author: Sarnath Banerjee
Publisher:Penguin Books India

Who is the Author? Back in the 90's an awesome magazine called 'Gentleman' was revived. It died mysteriously in 2000. Towards the end of its life, the magazine had introduced a page, which was illustrated by Sarnath Bannerjee & it had an interesting male take, on city life. Well our dude finally got around to doing a graphic novel.

It was marketed as India's first graphic novel. It got a lot of good reviews but I beg to differ on various points. Firstly it isn't India's first graphic novel. What is a graphic novel? Imagine a comic book. Usually each panel has simple depiction of scenes. In a graphic novel each panel goes thru a special treatment at the arists hands. I have read a few in which each panel was painted. Basically a graphic novel is a very artsy fartsy comic book. In India we've had things come close to this genre of art/literature. We've had Mario Miranda's heavily illustrated travelogues. We've got graphical adaptations of epics & histories a la Amar Chitra Katha.

Coming back to 'Corridor'. The book has no particular style. Bits of the book r superbly illustrated & inked exquistely. Some of the panels r over inked though. Some pages look like Mr. Banerjee forgot to ink them & the pencil lines & shades can be seen. Somewhere inbetween the novel a clutch of pages have been coloured (albeit badly). Some pages r a collage of calender art, photos & illustrations. So art wise the book has no consistent style. It feels as though the book was a hurried job & Penguin India offered to colour a few pages for the author if he could deliver earlier. Our chap had an awesome pen & ink style going on in the beginning (which he should've stuck to) but then bad colouring, collages came in & had a vulgar dance.

What is the 'graphic novel' abt? Its abt drab city life; Its highs & lows from the perspective of different characters. The book is as aimless as city life. U have a guy who is trying to figure out how screwed his relationship is & screwing it up even more, u have a chap whose having wet dreams abt an IT job in the US & a chap trying his best to liven up his love life. The last panel in the book gives us the impression that the whole graphic novel exercise was a part of some kind of therapy to get over the author's last lover. Certain bits of it r entertaining, some panels profound. The book adds to what Desmond Morris said abt human beings i.e, We r not animals living in a concrete jungle but animals living in a concrete zoo. While reading this book I was reminded of the movie 'Bombay Boys'( by Kaizad Gustad). The 1st half of the movie was really entertaining. Afterwards it nose-dived & u could smell its corpse.

In conclusion, the book read like a radio being tuned. Amidst a sea of noise & blips one hears a good song & that too briefly. A little funny here & a little existential loneliness there. Artwise this book SUCKS! Don't bother w/ this book. Contact me if u wan't to read it anyways.

List of Gaphic Novel's that I like:
Ronin - Frank Miller
Sin City - Frank Miller
The City - James Herbert
Le Monde d'Edena: Les Réparateurs - Moebius
Call of Cthulu - H.P. Lovecraft, Illustrated by John Coulthart