FAMINE TALES SC

Famine Tales: A Graphic Anthology brings to light a selection of stories of famine from both India and Britain, presented through the work of two teams of artists. It offers two versions of each famine tale – one retold by patachitrakars from the Naya village, and another by modern comic artists. The NaNaya artists from Midnapore, West Bengal, tell the tales in their traditional style of scroll painting, their scrolls based on original narrative poems composed by the legendary patachitrakar, the late Dukhushyam Chitrakar. A second team of artists adapted and illustrated the same historical narratives of famine in the form of comics.

Moving between depictions of dearth in Bengali oral poetry, famine in the time of Shakespeare, the merchant Peter Mundy’s travels to Surat and Agra, the Midlands Rising of 1607, and, finally, the harrowing famine of Bengal in 1770, the artwork in this path-breaking collection is an extraordinary and vivid reimagination of the intertwined histories of food security and dearth in India and Britain. With its use of patachitra and comics, Famine Tales offers a thought-provoking and poignant exploration of the impact of famine on the cultural memories and politics of Indian people, and the long-standing effects of the Indian economy and socio-economic structures.