Q. Some parts of the book, especially at the beginning, are in black and white, while most of the second half is translated in color.
Remembering and drawing slows you down. When you draw from memory, you constantly ask yourself: What color were the walls? How narrow was the road? How did the atmosphere feel? Memory is imperfect, and this imperfection inevitably enters the drawings.
Shifting between black and white and color is related to how I remember particular scenes. Sometimes I remember a moment mainly through the contrasts of light, shadow and tonality. Those scenes naturally become black and white. In other cases, color is central to the memory. Before, I wasn’t particularly confident with color and tended to see the world more through tones and tones. My son often tells me that my coloring has improved significantly.
Q. Is your idea of the house clear? Has writing this book changed your understanding of what home means?
One of the things I love about comics and graphic novels is that they allow for multiple perspectives. Most of us are not quite sure of our beliefs or positions… We are often unsure of what happiness means, what home means, what gives us security, or even what love is. Comics are a great vehicle for expressing that uncertainty.
For Brighu, home is Delhi. Even after spending decades in Berlin, raising a child there and growing from a young man to a middle-aged man, he continues to call Delhi home. But for his son, that continuity may not exist. He may never live in Delhi the same way.
At the same time, the India Brighu remembers has changed. There has been this huge movement towards a more conservative society – anti-women, anti-caste and anti-minority in many ways. Therefore, the book also touches on the fear of returning home, because even a small change in something familiar can feel unsettling. So the book is not trying to give a definitive answer about the house. It’s a contemplation of what home means when people move between countries, cultures and generations.
