An increasing number of comic books (usually under the label of ‘graphic novel’) talk about certain personalities, places fit for feature sections, and important historical events. Malicious tongues claim that this has now become a simple recipe for success – the social and political relevance of the content often conceals the stylistic and dramatic void.
This is logical: on the one hand, zeitgeist-compatible works on political figureheads, contemporary anecdotes, charismatic artists and exotic places are guaranteed to hold the attention of an intellectually-oriented readership that subscribes to subject matter; on the other hand, one can also always use the supposed demand for content to argue against an image that appears to trash the graphic novel as a medium.
The thematic depth notwithstanding, the popular works often remain popular because they play safe by shying away from stylistic experiments and from anything out of the ordinary. To mention the representatives of this rather flat and didactic graphic-novel style by name would be in poor taste. After this admittedly nasty introduction, let us for a change focus on good style. This is a portrait of Berlin, one that would bring the city closer to Indian readers, yet one that successfully defies the conventions of the didactic graphic novel.
There is a magic inherent in geography
In Enchanted Geography, even Sarnath Banerjee writes about a hyped city while making full use of common clichés. Yes, the latte-macchiato mothers, the bumming around in the park, diverse hipster pilgrimage sites, minimal techno and the notorious first of May with Nazi demonstrations in Marzahn and revolutionary romanticism in Kreuzberg, all also belong to Berlin.
The 17 columns that the Berliner-by-choice composed in 2013 for The Hindu, one of India’s largest dailies, document these phenomena, but do not leave it at that. Generally speaking, the list can do what the column is not – help capture the city’s character to some extent[RK1] . To start with: it is not a graphic novel but a photo-text collage that contains elements of comics and photography. This is not a pure documentation of Berlin, not reportage, not an autobiographical story, not pure fiction. It is a bit of everything, a Berlin mélange, the famous post-modern palimpsest – and this is precisely what makes it so attractive.
Enchanted Geography: difficult to capture, not easy to categorise, as is the case with places and the atmosphere in these places that elude systematic classification. The title of the columns is therefore an appropriate choice: enchantment is inherent in geography, a special magic is inherent in the places and non-places of Berlin. Urban spaces and places in the text are a reason for opening up perspectives of other spaces and places, in a different time or on a different continent, and hence for opening a dialogue between picture and text, between Berlin and Delhi, between today and yesterday, between German and Indian flaneurs, and between lyrical escapades and reports, aphorism and absurd humour, autobiography and fiction. Bannerjee’s Berlin inspires, total stream of consciousness, mental and visual reflections, also on the really big issues: money, love, home.
Berlin's multiple identities
In the second episode entitled Merry Wanderers of the Night (May 2013), Brighu, Banerjee’s avatar, is at Berlin’s former Airport Tempelhof at night, musing over the historical significance of the place (keyword: Berlin Airlift) and reflecting on the strolling figures: ‘Brighu felt comforted. Despite the lateness of the hour there were still a few merry wanderers of the night out and about: Joggers, drug dealers, defenders of doctoral theses, UFO-logists, anti-Assad shopkeepers from nearby Neukölln, architectural theorists, pro-Assad shopkeepers, seekers of cosmetic dangers, Australians, travelers from southern Europe looking for electronic music and sex, indignant taxpayers worrying about the Euro crisis, the meek, the strong, the reckless, the anxious, all strolling in the darkness, digesting food, sipping beer.’
In front of the abandoned airport building we see a rear view of his graphic avatar striking a contemplative pose. Together with him we look at a cyclist, his cape billowing, gesticulating wildly: ‘Local legends say that he is a musician by profession and comes here every other evening to compose and to feel the night. He uses the place like an office, all 4 square kilometers of it.’
In Brighu’s imagination, he is the one who unites the disparate figures listed above into a harmonious symphony of the city: ‘Members of a calm universe. But who holds it together in a single symphony? Is it the composer on the bike? The Bappi Lahiri of Tempelhof. Brighu wondered as he looked up at moon.’ Banerjee resembles the composer cyclist. He documents and collects the multiple identities of Berlin and its inhabitants with clear, decisive strokes, warm colours and a delicate feeling for the word. In the process he demonstrates how to create fantastic places and completely new universes with intertextuality, plenty of humour and a touch of melancholy. Bappi Lahiri, Walter Benjamin, Robert Walser, Angela Merkel and Janis Joplin: We encounter them all in “Enchanted Geography”. And the more bizarre the encounters, the better they fit into Banerjee’s ‘calm universe’ and his symphony of the city.
