Modern Minorities

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EP 223: KARI’s melancholy & the infinite (Indian) sadness

Modern Minorities

“India is this place that's known, but distant to me. The Indians I knew were always my parents' generation, so I can only observe its youth culture through books like this.” 

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Ever wondered what it's like to be a female South Asian advertising writer working on women's hair care products living in a big and bustling smog city, cramped into an apartment with several single women, while also Queer and saddled with a sense of regret and ennui? Well either way, you should read KARI, the 2008 debut graphic novel by Indian artist Amruta Patil, who's since gone on to become a leading voice in the Indians comic scene, illustrating a number of projects - including a reimagining of the Hindu epic the Mahabharata. In Kari, we meet the eponymous protagonist upon her surviving a heartbroken suicide attempt, and we follow her to at work and at and home in the hustle and bustle of smog city. A marketing and advertising exec who turns her creative eye on the world, she lives a semi-closeted Queer life, living with many single women, befriending or romantically rebounding with a business colleague with weeks left to live, and just surviving in a monsoon drenched city. In deeply drawn black and white chapters we journey through Kari's crowded loneliness, sleeper success, and death - all in the shadow of her departed partner. The book is a sensuous yet wry commentary on life and love and unlike anything we'd ever seen. This is a bonus episode from Raman’s OTHER podcast, Quarantined Comics, but this graphic novel  is one that fits the Modern Minorities mission for all of our majority ears - and one of the rare episodes where Ryan and Raman agree on (almost) everything.


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