This is an article I wrote for The Times of India in March 2025 to mark the 24th anniversary of G. Aravindan's passing. Today, when I came across a blog post on the complete edition of Cheriya Manushyarum Valiya Lokavum—particularly the story behind the design and archiving of that seminal work—I was reminded of this piece. Unfortunately, the original link is no longer available, so I am sharing the article here on my blog.
P Sudhakaran |
Long before the graphic novel, G Aravindan used the comic
format to evoke loss of innocence and the unravelling of history.
Almost 17 years before American comic artist Will Eisner published A Contract with God, which formally defined the concept of a graphic novel, there appeared a full page comic strip on the back page of the Republic Day edition of Mathrubhumi weekly in 1961.
A story that began with a critique on the Republic Day in a
subtle manner, G Aravindan's Cheriya Manushyarum Valiya Lokavum (Little Men and
the Big World) opened readers of the '60s and '70s to a new reading experience.
Aravindan introduced Ramu, the protagonist, to a readership that was used to
cartoon strips where characters never aged and time stood still, as was the
case with the evergreen Bobanum Moliyum! Aravindan's characters grew and they
passed through the milestones of history , both cultural and political. From G
Sankara Kurup's winning the Jnanpith to the Indo-China war and the death of
Nehru and Che Guevara, the Malayali passion for Bengali and global literature,
the library movement, he unveiled a vast world before the readers with the
confidence that they could comprehend it.
Unlike in ordinary comic strips, in Cheriya Manushyarum
Valiya Lokavum space and time were clearly defined observes noted cartoonist,
author and graphic narrator E P Unny . “It was Aravindan who gave us a reading
experience comparable to that of Europe and the US where there was an advanced
cartooning culture,“ he says. “It certainly wasn't a pre-set novel, in terms of
having a well-defined plot, because he had no model before him in that medium
and thus it became open to the passage of time.“ The story began with the
ordinary life and ambitions of a youth in the '60s who maintained certain
values in life. The city, with all its hustle-bustle, became a lively space
that never questioned an individual's identity. But he ended up being part of
what he hated as a youth, as was the case with some of his peers, thus making
it the chronicle of th loss of innocence. loss of innocence.
As Ramu loses his innocence and becomes part of corrupt
practices, the world around him shrinks. The frames that once portrayed life in
graphic details become blank depicting how he got cut off from the vast world
as he climbed the social ladder, thus making the text and images mutually
complementary .
A work that began as a comic strip and slowly assumed the
character of a graphic novel, it can be seen as the visual ethnography of
Kerala society , according to cartoonist and researcher Gokul Gopalakrishnan.
“The importance of Aravindan as a comic-strip artist rests in how he managed to
conceptualize those issues which were deemed outside the scope of so-called
`low art' medium. It sort of drove the point home that art in itself could not
be `high' or `low' by virtue of any specific medium,“ Gopalakrishnan says in a
study .
Though the comic strip was well received, ironically it had
an abrupt ending in 1973. According to Unny , the way it ended is itself a
comment on Kerala society .“Aravindan must have sensed intuitively that
coherence is gone from the social life of Malayalis... A cartoon has kind of a
prophetic nature that anticipates early social signs.“
But where Aravindan stopped, the next generation began their
journey into the world of the graphic novel. That is the legacy of Cheriya
Manushyarum, Valiya Lokavum.
