The Inspired Life
The Inspired Life
From Documentaries to Graphic Novels: A Creative Journey
Ever wondered how a documentary filmmaker transitions to a celebrated graphic novelist? Join me, Deepika, on the Inspired Life Podcast as I reunite with my long-time friend Jay. Together, we explore his fascinating journey into the world of graphic novels, a path he chose after struggling to visually document Hyderabad's historical sites. Jay shares how his love for childhood classics like Amar Chitra Katha, Tintin, and Asterix shaped his storytelling style, and offers a glimpse into his collaborations with talented artists to bring his scripts to life. Our conversation is filled with laughter and nostalgia as we reminisce about our book recommendations and horror movie nights, even brainstorming ways to turn these beloved rituals into more immersive experiences.
But the episode isn't just about Jay; I also open up about my own journey as a writer, from an early love for Tintin to discovering the transformative works of Alan Moore in London. We discuss the freedom to follow our passions, the struggle with laziness over writer's block, and the joy of seeing our ideas materialize on paper. Our chat then shifts to the nuanced world of graphic novels, dissecting storytelling techniques and character designs from iconic series like Tintin and Phantom. Whether you're an enthusiast or an aspiring creator, this episode offers valuable insights and a fresh perspective on appreciating graphic novels. Tune in for an enlightening and entertaining conversation that promises to inspire.
If you like what you hear, subscribe and follow us on Spotify, iTunes and Amazonmusic. A new episode will come out every 1st and 15th of a month. You can also follow us on Instagram on theinspiredlifepodcast. If you want to mail me to discuss some of the things we are talking here or have a story to share on this podcast, email me at theinspiredlifeindia@gmail.com. This is Deepika and I thank you for listening.
Hi, I'm Deepika and welcome to the Inspired Life Podcast. Joining me today is Jay in this series of Not a Doctor or an Engineer, where we explore different unconventional professions where passion takes precedence over societal pressures. Hi, jay, welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 2:Hi Deepika, thank you for having me.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So before we even begin into the questions, I was just thinking today morning, knowing well that I'm going to meet you later, that it's going to be around two decades since we know each other and yeah, and that's, I think, while we have connection, of the school where you went to, where my husband went to. Also, I think the first time I met you was as supposedly your assistant at work.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I think I was like your boss and I gave you some very boring work which I didn't want to do myself yeah, and I had no clue how to do that work, honestly, and I had never even heard how it is supposed to be done. I hated it and I was already thinking about quitting that job on day two. I'm glad I had never even heard how it is supposed to be done. I hated it and I was already thinking about quitting that job. It was day two.
Speaker 2:I'm glad I had that effect on you.
Speaker 1:Well, it's been quite a long time and, apart from the common friend circle, we have been friends for a while and we have our own little rituals, whether it's sharing books Actually, you gave me the books to read and recommend, which has been, I think, really really helpful for me because I have, in the last few years, stopped looking for books, I don't really have the time for it and also our horror movie nights, which is supposed to be a quarterly ritual but has somehow, unfortunately, turned into an annual one now.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So the horror movies are like, yeah, that that's something, and we kind of create the conditions where maximum horror can also be extracted from the situation.
Speaker 1:Yeah, kind of a spooky.
Speaker 2:In fact, we actually had some idea that you do this in some kind of like a farmhouse or whatever outside and we have like this whole like weekend where we call people and we watch like four or five horror movies and then have a ghost story.
Speaker 1:Why did we not do it? We should do this I, and then have a ghost story. Why did we not do it? We should do this. I think it's a good idea, and we do have a lot of farmhouses available and we should just do it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's a very meta thing where that could also be like a plot point for a horror movie, where you have a group of people who watch horror movies and they go, all these out of place.
Speaker 1:It's like those scenes when you're watching the movie and you're saying, how dumb can you be?
Speaker 2:like why are you here? Yeah?
Speaker 1:but yeah, it looks, it sounds good. We should look at it Now. Coming to the podcast today, so you are a graphic novelist. Can you tell us your journey into it and what inspired you to get into it and start writing?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So the first thing is I can't draw to save my life. I can. I think I can draw stick figures at best. So I am a graphic novelist in the sense that, or you can call it comic books, chitra kada, whatever you want Though I work with artists and I write the script and I kind of do some of the I mean, I do the research and the planning and the layouts and so on. But I've been very fortunate that I've worked with a lot of very good artists over the years.
Speaker 2:How did I start? Well, I mean, I have a background in documentary, studying, documentary filmmaking, and it so happened that there was these opportunities to make a documentary film set in Hyderabad, where we would, where I would get to show, you know, the monuments and I'm not talking about these very big, famous monuments like Golconda or Chaminad, but you know old Havelis, things like that and it turned out that there was a. You know many of those had been demolished, all were being demolished, all were in very poor condition, so visually they were. You know, you couldn't do anything. And at that point it just so happened that, you know, because I was interested in comics, I was like this actually, you know, you could.
Speaker 2:Actually this would work very well with comics because you can actually use archival photographs or paintings and show Hyderabad as it was and that kind of plays to the sense of comics. So that was one way I approached it. The other point is, of course, like a lot of people from my generation, we grew up with Amma Chitra Kadha, we grew up with Tin Tin and Asterix and so on, so there was always this and there was Indrajal comics. So there was this exposure to comics. And because there were TV and there were no other opportunities, really at that point for entertainment.
Speaker 2:There was either cinema, there was either books, of course, and there were comics. So you could go really deep into it and after some point, for example, if you read Amachitra Kada, you kind of realise that each comics have a different style. And then you look up the credits page and you see names like Ram Ram, veer, ker, and so on, and you start associating these artists with this style. So you kind of start learning about that.
Speaker 2:Similarly, if you read Tintin of course at that time I didn't know what Clarline, clearline, whatever they called it then the actual technical details but you could clearly make out that Tintin was very different from, say, phantom and very different from, say, superman, and you kind of instantly realized that and you kind of instantly realize that Tintin had very simple human figures, like Tintin himself is just like his face is a circle, with a little you know, three lines to indicate his hair and a U turned on its side to indicate its nose and just two dots for his eyes. But if you look at the backgrounds that are beautifully detailed and this is something I learned later was that this effect was a very calciated effect where you have very beautiful backgrounds, very technically accurate automobiles, planes, wherever Tintin is going, but Tintin and the figures themselves are generally very simple so what this happens is you have this immersive effect.
Speaker 2:You are Tintin when you read Tintin, you are tinted, correct. So, and this is something which we felt, of course I didn't know all this, but I could kind of sense the power of comics. So I think, yeah, so when you start like that, you have this exposure to comics and it's not unnatural that you would at some point say you know what? Hey, maybe I can also try doing that.
Speaker 1:Correct, correct. Your father is also somebody who writes, correct, yeah but that was much later.
Speaker 2:So I mean, for a long time he was like, when I was into comics and graphic novels, he was like people would say, oh, he's the father of the graphic novels. Now I'm like, oh, I'm the son of that writer. So he's like really changed in the last three, four years. He's really changed the game.
Speaker 1:So he's won awards and his novels have come out. That is amazing. That tells you there's no age, right age or right time.
Speaker 2:He started entirely after retirement and he kind of, but basically he has an enormous work ethic which I sadly lack. So the same work ethic which he used when he was working in his corporate or other kind of a career he put into his writing and you know the kind of research and the kind of methodological heft it shows.
Speaker 1:When you were growing up or when you started getting interested into this, you know, towards writing and the whole world of imagination and everything, did you ever feel the pressure from either your family or the people around you to conform to something more run of the mill, usual jobs or go get a job which is safe and not try your luck at this?
Speaker 2:I've been very fortunate that my parents in general supported whatever that I did. I grew up in a family which loved books, so we were just. You know, our house was filled with books, so it was not, you know, you kind of read.
Speaker 2:you start reading you, then you start developing your own collection yeah and so that was fine, so I was reading books and all that. It was very obvious that I had no little to no engineering skill or talents which I had inherited from my father. So you know, basically at that point you wrote M set and then you got into engineering college, correct? So that was never going to be an option for me, so it was like, by default, I have to do something. The other thing is that and this I'm saying this looking back yeah, is that I kind of I collect useless facts or I'm like a catalog of these obsessions. So you know, I can tell you some very random details about World War II, 1942 in World War II, correct, or you know, why is whatever? I mean, you know, why did we never only use airships or zeppelins and why did we shift to commercial airlines? Yeah, whatever, all kinds of random, no, it's very, you know.
Speaker 1:I have noticed, and I've always admired not only your capacity to retain information but also to recall, because there'll be times when you are telling me about some book or some movie and you're telling me all these little tidbits about it. I'm like how does it stay in his head and how can he remember all of it? So yeah, it's quite obvious.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly so that was, and that's useless, Like that, has no career applications of any kind, and I was not good at science or biology, so basically that, okay, we can work backwards from across the elimination. So no good in engineering, no good in science, so that kind of cuts out all that. No good in biology, so that cuts out. You know medicine? No well, you can have law as one thing. Yeah, so maybe that is the one option. Maybe I could have done law.
Speaker 2:A lot of my classmates did in fact get into National Law School and some of them are doing very well in the legal form. Yes, so maybe that was that. But I think again, because of this family background and so on, I was very interested in creating something Correct, Doing something. So writing was a very natural outlet. It's unfortunate that I, though my family background is in you know we're Telugu's and we have. You know, my father is very good. He's a well-known Telugu writer. My grandfather was a very well-known Telugu poet. It's somewhat unfortunate that I never developed that kind of a proficiency where I could write in Telugu, so I wrote in.
Speaker 2:English, which is one way unfortunate, but I was also able to sort of, because I was coming from this background, so I had access to Telugu literature and you know, and of course, our epic tradition and I was also reading comics and in a way it worked because there was all these different synthesis of different elements and in terms of yeah, so basically I said I'm a catalogue of obsessions, of useless information. So where could you really apply? You could apply it in a medium which is at a junction of different mediums. So when you do a comic, you're designing a layout, you're doing the research, you're writing the script, you're working with the artist to kind of, you know, see how it works, how the research, you're writing the script, you're working with the artist to kind of, you know, see how it works, how the flow, how the images flow, how the action flows.
Speaker 2:So it involves photography, it involves archival research, it involves, you know, writing, of course, like the actual script, and so it involves architecture, because you have so many things in the background and you're doing a realistic comic. So in retrospect it was architecture, because you have so many things in the background and you're doing a realistic comic. So in retrospect it was perfect, like here I am. Who collects all this junk information?
Speaker 2:And here you have this medium which is built on you knowing all these things. For example, I'm doing two or three comics right now. One is set in 1930s, calcutta, it's a horror comic. One is for a client and that's set in the 1970s and it has a legal background to it, and there's one more which is a completely silent comic, which is set in this sort of a fantasy world. So all of them.
Speaker 2:So for the 1930s comic, in one panel, I have to know about how cars look like then, like if they're driving a Rolls Royce, what would be the Rolls Royce model of that 1936? So, to be accurate, what would the costumes look like then? For the 1970s legal comic, I have to know, you know, okay, forget the details. Now I have to know the law, like how do you address the judge? How does a case begin? What is the first thing we know when, the, when they, you know when they say the court is in session, what happens then? What are the mechanics of that? So it's very interesting where, every day, each time you open your computer or your notebook and you start working, you have absolutely no idea what kind of challenges you face yeah, very interesting, you face.
Speaker 2:Yeah, very interesting. How do you develop characters and make sure that?
Speaker 2:they resonate with your readers. Well, I don't know if they've resonated with the readers, that's one thing. Well, the first thing is they should resonate with me. I mean, you know, I should be interested. For example, there was one character in Hyderabad, a graphic novel, who is a kind of this poet who is wandering around Hyderabad and so on. So that is obviously, you know, based partly on me, partly on people whom I saw. So that is fairly easy. There's a historical comic I'm doing which is more interesting in one way because it's all set in the past. So how do you make that happen? Like, how do you make the Because it's a major problem, right, like when you do a historical comic or any historical work of fiction, really you, the people who are reading it, are your contemporaries now. So they will look at it from the perspective of now and you will also look at it from that perspective. But those characters also would have to be true to the 1930s, or they should at least seem to be true to the, whatever that category that is yeah.
Speaker 2:So that's kind of quite tricky. So they're each. You know each character has the challenges. My point is because I'm this kind of a guy who's really into all this like research, reading, obscure stuff. It's not a coincidence that all these characters are also like that. They're always desperately searching for something. They're searching for a book which will give them all the answers, things like that, which kind of mirror my own obsessions really.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I've seen that. Have any books, authors or novels significantly influenced your work?
Speaker 2:Yes. So I would say, as I said, tintin, it started with Tintin. Then later, when I was studying in London, I was doing journalism there, so technically I'm a journalist. So what happened was that at that point this whole graphic novel revolution had started. So what would happen was, earlier you would have these you see, indrajal comics, you are very flimsy, right so at some point these very big companies, they put all those issues together and they would bind them and have very nice production values and start selling them as graphic novels that are significantly higher markup. So that's how you could start accessing older stories and you could read Superman in the 50s and 60s and so on, in this one collected volume which you have to have, that entire story arc.
Speaker 2:So anyway, so long story short. These used to be available in these bookstores in London and, very nicely, they never bothered if people went and just read them without buying them, which is anyway it was unaffordable for me as a student. So there was this very big bookstore near my university so I would spend hours there reading and that was like that kind of really opened the because, as I said, I grew up in Tintin and Amachitra Katha, which are very nice, but they are set. I mean, they're basically creations of the 50s and the 60s and so on, or even earlier. So for the first time I was exposed to what graphic knowledge was doing now, like in the 80s and so on, you know, because we never grew up with those correct and that was a real eye-opener.
Speaker 2:I in particular discovered the works of Alan Moore, who has done League of Extraordinary, gentlemen From Hell, the writer for all of this, and I really liked what he was doing. Again, as I said, I didn't have any intention of, I didn't think of myself as writing comics, but I immediately realized the first thing unlike Tintin or, let's say, even Calvin and Hobbes, alan Moore was a writer. He didn't draw. He actually is a talented artist. He was not, I could see, writer and artist and each of his books had a very different style because the artist would change. I think that's when the first seed came, that ah, okay, I can you know, actually I can also be just this writer.
Speaker 2:I don't have to know how to draw Because my understanding at that point point I thought people with comics had to draw and write at the same time because and that was, I think, how it all started and obviously I think what happens is when you start reading, or you whatever reading, watching whatever, at some point you read the really good works and you're inspired, and at some point you start really reading really bad works and then you're like, hey, I can do better than that. And the moment that's like a very fatal thought, and the moment that thought enters you, then you start thinking okay, if I had to do this, how would I do it? And that's how it begins.
Speaker 1:What about the idea of success? Because in a conventional profession or job you know we have, you get a hike, you get a promotion. When you're doing something like this, uh, the idea of success can be so different for different people. How do you deal with that and where do you think you lie in understanding what you mean? Uh, what do you think success is for you?
Speaker 2:well, I think success is, uh, simply the ability to do what you want to do without any external pressures. So in this case, for example, if you're a writer, you get to keep writing what you want to write without worrying about anything else, and so on. More broadly, for me success would be something like it would be fairly mundane and trivial things like you know you get good sleep.
Speaker 2:You wake up and have a. You know no one is calling you and saying get to work. You know you're the one who is and basically, as I said, I have all these obsessions. So it's something like you get up and you're okay. I need to read about 18th century French politics or something, or you know how did they make artillery pieces in Tsarist Russia, whatever? Some very random things which all hopefully tie up somewhere. That's one thing. At a more sort of abstract level, I think, if you're a creator, it's like you have this beehive in your head. You have this constant buzz of ideas and something it's like really horrible. So the only way to get rid of this beehive is to put it on paper. So when you write a story and it becomes a comic, you never think about it in your rest of your life, hopefully. So that is for me success. Like I have all these ideas, I put them out on paper. Good done. Now the next beehive. You know that's how it is.
Speaker 1:That's really interesting and I really like the analogy of a beehive. I think that's something I'm going to use later. I'm letting you know already. Now, what about the writer's block or self-doubt? How do you handle that?
Speaker 2:I think for me it's not so much writer's block but laziness. I'm extremely lazy. Whatever work that has appeared has appeared despite my best efforts to not do it. And technically speaking, let's say, someone said I'll give you or I have money, like in the 18th century they have this gentleman of leisure or whatever. I'm also huge reader. I love reading which is parallel to it.
Speaker 2:So the idea that I have to write something which people would love to read and I don't think I have that kind of egoism I am perfectly happy with just spending the rest of my life in my library just reading. But okay, you have to do something. So here I would say, for me the thing is that because I come from a certain place in a certain period of time, what I can write sort of reflects a kind of a generation or reflects a certain society or a culture at a certain point of time, like a snapshot. So for me that is the larger responsibility I have of what. So when I write something, I'm writing about this very particular period of time of these people and so on. So I think that that is definitely what keeps me going.
Speaker 2:So I don't have as a writer's block, I have the opposite thing with congenital laziness. But whenever I have fought this laziness and done better, I have noticed that okay, the results are pretty decent. So that keeps me going. I have never experienced writer's block and I hope never to. I do have a lot of trouble finishing things, so, like this is a very constant thing of starting stuff and not seeing it through. I think that's my biggest problem. If I just finish half the thing that start I'm, you know, I don't have to care about anything you?
Speaker 1:you've also gone on writer's retreat a few times, right? Do you think it helps in that solitude to uh produce better content, or be faster, or your laziness is?
Speaker 2:no, I think. Basically, you, you write, you start with what you have yeah and you do with what you. You know, the tools you have, that's it, that's it, that's it. There's no, uh, so whatever. However, uh, it's a complete fallacy that you have to go somewhere or something. Basically, you can't hide from yourself.
Speaker 2:If you're a lazy character in your apartment in hyderabad, you'll be a lazy fellow in wherever retreat you are, you can't escape yourself right where I think, uh, writer, retreat works is definitely for people, let's say, who are very busy carriers, doing some other stuff and they have to carve out some time to do, to start something.
Speaker 2:Let's say, then I think it will work because you can say you know what, I'm going to take 10 days off or two weeks off and go to this retreat or whatever, or go on my own somewhere and I will start this work. I think it's very good for that also. It's also very good. Let's say you finish the book or whatever the project and you're doing the editing of it, the final editing. Then you can say you know what? I want to go for like 10 days and just sit on this and edit this and put it into shape. That's the only two situations. In my opinion it will work. Just going to a retreat is actually the worst thing, because you have enormous pressure, because you have spent so much money, taken so much time and you have the empty page and there's nothing more terrifying than the empty page really.
Speaker 1:Yes, yes, true.
Speaker 2:What advice would you give to aspiring writers who are just starting out? Well, you have to read. You can't be a writer unless you're a reader first and, as I said, ideally it should be that you're reading and then you say you know what I can do better. That should become an organic. You know, it should come organically. You should develop good taste. If you don't have good taste, then I am sorry, I can't do anything about it. Or maybe you have terrible taste and people in general have terrible taste, so maybe that terrible taste will work.
Speaker 1:We have come across very terrible books and authors and we have discussed them and they are big sellers.
Speaker 2:Yes, but even for that, you have to understand that, what is making it work, that taste, you have to understand that like what is making it work.
Speaker 1:That taste.
Speaker 2:You have to have that even if you're writing this, even for that. So you need to develop that taste and that's all. Then you develop the work ethic and so on. So where you create a situation where you can very quickly get to work, for example, you have to have a notebook or a file on your computer or whatever where you constantly write down ideas and so on, and then you have to have like a folder or again something or a notepad or whatever, where, let's say, in the middle of the day, you're like okay, I, I want to write something. Now I have an idea. So you quickly take out that thing and you write it. So you have an ability to quickly uh, do whatever you uh to. How do I put it to instrumentalize what you want to do? Let me put it this way let's say uh, you kind of observe yourself.
Speaker 2:If you're a addicted you know insta addicted character. Yeah, how many times you take out the phone and you open insta like randomly right. You, this is complete on autopilot, you don't even think about it like right. And you do ita like randomly right, this is completely on autopilot, you don't even think about it Right. And you do it 30 times a day or something at least. Imagine you have the same instinct, the Insta instinct, but instinct for writing. Now imagine that 30 times a day you write one sentence. Like you get this idea, you go and you, so you have to create that ability. That you have to have some notebook or some file on your computer, on your phone doesn't matter that you do that. And and this is an example which everyone has given basically you need to write like maybe 50 60 words a day, that's all. If you can write 50 60 words a day, consistently, let's say five days a week, you're a writer do you think a certain kind of educational background or training helps?
Speaker 2:No, because, for example, all the writers. I'll give you an example. So let's say you have science fiction, you have this Andy Weir or whatever, the guy who wrote the Martian. So he actually didn't come from very traditional, traditional, he was an engineer or something and he wrote all this very boring engineering kind of a book and the traditional people, who kind of you know the gatekeepers of science fiction, they were like what the hell is this is like some engineering manual, and they rejected it and he instead put it on a blog or whatever.
Speaker 2:He kind of did his own thing and people really liked it. So that worked for him because, uh, that was a completely different approach to science fiction which no one had seen at that point, where he's writing is very mechanical and factual kind of a thing which people loved, and he's like solving problems, like constant solving of problems, uh, which he's like it. So that that worked for him. So, whatever. But the thing is you have to own that like. If you have that background which is different, then you say you know what, I'm going to own it, I'm going to write exactly as someone, like from my background.
Speaker 1:I don't try to write as someone else you did mention earlier about the projects you're working on right now. What's coming up? Would you like to elaborate a little bit more about it?
Speaker 2:well, the uh, I, I mean the client projects are the client projects. I can't talk about them, but my own. What I'm working on is I'm working on something called Lovecraft in India, which is a 1930s historical alternate history where HP Lovecraft travels to India, to Calcutta, and he kind of is involved in all kinds of occult adventures. I hope that, if there is a good response, that it will become a series. But right now we are doing one self-contained graphic novel of 100 pages Myself and artist for show, mohan Chaturad, with whom I have worked in the past many times. So it's coming out, if I can say so myself, it's coming out very nicely. We are almost at the end, but our art is also done. So we're going to be, you know, releasing all that very soon and we hope for a maybe september launch.
Speaker 1:Let's see really look forward to it. Congratulations on that, look forward to all your work all the time and thank you so much for doing this podcast with me today and giving such amazing much for doing this podcast with me today and giving such amazing information and, I'm sure, valuable advice to anybody else who would like to do this and an insight into graphic novels.
Speaker 1:There's so much, I think, that none of us have noticed, despite reading graphic novels since we were kids, like you know the things you said about Tintin and Phantom. Of course, it's very obvious to people who read that how different they are. But things like small things, like how the characters are not very deeply designed or explained and the background is so. Yeah, thank you so much. I'm sure we all will look at all graphic novels differently now.
Speaker 2:Thank you, Deepika, for having me on. Thank you.
Speaker 1:If you like what you hear, subscribe and follow us on Spotify, thank you, or have a story to share on this podcast? Email me at theinspiredlifeindia at gmailcom. This is Deepika and I thank you for listening.