Stupid Guy Goes to India. By Yukichi Yamamatsu. Translated by Kumar Sivasubramanian

Stupid Guy Goes to India

Yukichi Yamamatsu. Translated by Kumar Sivasubramanian

Blaft Publications Pvt. Ltd. First published 2008.

This is a graphic novel, what I would have called a ‘comic’ about 20 years ago. But this not just ultra-light entertainment like Mickey Mouse or even Spiderman. It is a serious attempt at narration, an example of a genre I am coming to regard increasingly well. This particular book is the story of the author, who ‘modestly’ calls himself a ‘stupid guy’ and his sojourn in Delhi a few years ago. He is a ‘manga’ artist in Japan. Manga are Japanese graphic novels. They narrate a variety of different stories – fiction, history, biography and even science. They may be considered equivalent to novels for those who, like Alice, want to see a lot of pictures in the books they read. But they can be serious stuff, and take, I suppose, as much effort and creative imagination as ‘regular’ novels.

Yukichi wants to sell his manga in India. He does not know anything about India, and knows neither English nor any Indian language. Yet he has this crazy, and, yes, stupid idea that he will find a large market for his stuff here, if only he can get it translated into Hindi. So he catches a flight to Delhi, and goes around trying to find first a room, then a translater, next a printer, and finally customers. He has some luck with the first three, but almost none with the last. In between he gets used to spicy Indian food, sort-of-learns to bargain, learns the meaning of the different types of Indian head shakes, experiences Indian toilets (describing his bowel movements in disgusting detail), and makes an unsatisfactory visit to a brothel. In the intervals of  work on his translation, he notices that the cello tape sold here are not easy to peel off from the reels, and to cut and stick. He invents a simple and cheap tin device to help in this, but cannot find customers for it, anymore than for his manga. Finally he catches a flight back to Japan, where I suppose he salvaged something, maybe a lot, from the trip by writing his experience up as Japanese manga, later translated into this volume. Perhaps that was his whole idea from the beginning.

His artwork, in black and white, is neat and nice, but rather static, with none of the dynamism one seems in, for example, Calvin and Hobbes. His dialogue is also just passable, no real jokes, at least not in the translation. The entire effort, I think is aimed at a Japanese audience, and though he strives very hard to be objective, an Indian cannot miss the prejudice. For example, almost the very first ‘fact’ about India he mentions is that the population is 1 billion, with 250 million unemployed. We are left with the idea this is a huge portion of the population as compared to the situation in Japan, perhaps, where the number, and percentage, may be much smaller. We are not told whether the number he quotes for India includes children and old people and other sections of the population who are usually not counted as ‘unemployed’ even if they are not formally in employment. There are other such prejudices sprinkled across the book. Especially irritating is his frustration at not being able to find people to translate Japanese cheaply for him and to help him carry out his crazy idea. Some of his observations, about toilets, and  the general uncleanliness of India, strikes true. These aspects, after all, have attracted the attention of no less a person than Prime Minister Modi.