India, Sept. 4 -- Had Kafka experienced an epiphany about the renewal of memory, Metamorphosis would have encompassed a thousand histories of a thousand years. Thankfully, he left that for illustrator, artist and poet exemplar Siddesh Gautam to achieve in The Blue Book. Among the few who have centralized Shraman-Bahujan history, Gautam is a true savant of India's graphic novel scene.

His work is certainly vastly different from the Chacha Chowdhury comics I loved as a child. It was a love that was cut short by my father's insistence that I read Tolstoy, Raja Dhale, Einstein and Kanshi Ram - heavy stuff. For a while, I rebelled. But the comic book love affair soon came to an end as it was expensive, and Nanded, where I grew up, didn't have...