Graphic Novel at the Cutting Edge of Indian Story-Telling Tradition: Reading Amrita Patil’s Sauptik: Blood and Flowers as an Indigenous Subtext of Indian Mythology

Abstract

The present paper is an attempt to analyse the use of Indian mythology in Graphic Novel. As an emerging literary form, Graphic novel (also known as Graphic literature and Visual narratives) seeks to explore novel means of telling stories. Indian Graphic novels draw extensively from Indian Mythology to revisit, revise and retell the wonder tales of India, while addressing contemporary concerns like covid, pollution, gender discrimination and the like.
The paper is centred on Amrita Pati’s Sauptik: Blood and Flowers, that addresses the gory reality behind the Kurukshetra battle, which is a ruthless infliction on lives and nature. Patil has framed her narrative to dwell on the damage rather than the honour attributed to wars in general, by the mainstream narratives like the Mahabharata and Ramayana. The papers shall unfold the means and methods Patil has used both in text and image to investigate human greed against nature and fellow humans, which are universal problems, irrespective of the time and space.