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A review by avaneesh
This Side, That Side: Restorying Partition by Mahmud Rahman, Malini Gupta, Mohit Suneja, Ankur Ahuja, Tabish Khair, Arundhati Ghosh, Tina Rajan, Kaiser Haq, Deewana, Amitabh Kumar, Cybermohalla Ensemble, Priya Sen, Rabbi Shergill, Fariha Rehman, Maria M. Litwa, Arif Ayaz Parrey, Khademul Islam, Martand Khosla, Pinaki De, Wasim Helal, Sonya Fatah, Appupen, Sarbajit Sen, Vidrohi, Bani Abidi, Priya Kuriyan, Archana Sreenivasan, Mehreen Murtaza, Dyuti Mittal, Saadat Hasan Manto, Nina Sabnani, Ahmad Rafay Alam, Sanjoy Chakraborty, Orijit Sen, Vishwajyoti Ghosh
3.0
The work of graphics in a graphic novel should be to assist in telling the story. The artwork should flow so smoothly that the reader is left wondering whether it would have been possible to do so in any other medium. An example would be the works of Joe Sacco, where the graphics and the story complement each other to such an extent that it becomes impossible to think of one without the other. This quality is, unfortunately, missing from 'This Side, That Side'.
While the artwork is beautiful in itself and the initiative, to anthologize partition stories from India and Pakistan, is commendable, the graphics, more often than not, distract the reader from the content. In some of the stories, like 'A Letter From India', the artwork, while beautiful, stands jarringly in contrast to the content. You are left wondering whether it was really needed and if the story could have been told much more effectively in a plain text form.
There are, however, some beautiful exceptions. 'I too have seen Lahore' and 'A good education' being a couple of them. But they are too few and too rare.
If this is a benchmark of where the Indian graphic novel stands today, it still has a long way to go.
While the artwork is beautiful in itself and the initiative, to anthologize partition stories from India and Pakistan, is commendable, the graphics, more often than not, distract the reader from the content. In some of the stories, like 'A Letter From India', the artwork, while beautiful, stands jarringly in contrast to the content. You are left wondering whether it was really needed and if the story could have been told much more effectively in a plain text form.
There are, however, some beautiful exceptions. 'I too have seen Lahore' and 'A good education' being a couple of them. But they are too few and too rare.
If this is a benchmark of where the Indian graphic novel stands today, it still has a long way to go.