All Quiet in Vikaspuri

Overview

Sarnath Banerjee is a storyteller who creates freehand sketches and drawings that incorporate text as well as film. In his recent graphic novel, greed, short-termism and ‘the politics of thuggery’ are explored through age-old genres of epic, satire and fable.

In All Quiet in Vikaspuri (2015), a series of A4-sized drawings depict the fictitious water wars of Delhi. Against this backdrop lies a dystopian urban warfare, in which neighbourhoods fight neighbourhoods, citizens take up arms, families split up, real estate agents become warlords and familiar locations turn into battlegrounds. Girish, the Psychic Plumber, embarks on a Homeric journey to the centre of the Earth in search of the mythical river Saraswati, which he believes will put an end to these brutal times. On his journey, he meets people who have been shunned in their rapidly changing cities and becomes their only hope. All Quiet in Vikaspuri is told through the diary of a financial advisor who designs costumes in his free time. Here, he dons one of his costumes and heads out into the night to report the brutal war.

This project was part of Sharjah Biennial 13.