Reading Chandrahasam is like going through the story board of a spectacular historical fiction movie. Illustrator Balashanmugan treats us to breathtaking aerial views of assembled armies, elephants on rampage, well-rendered terrains around the awe-inspiring walled city that was Madurai in the early 14th century. The strokes are thick and bold, working well to depict the urgency of a war thriller. And the panels move fast and easy, with enough room for inspired and inspiring moments.
Chandrahasam , the story of the legendary sword of the Pandyas, is an ambitious 10-volume project of which this is the first. Written by Sahitya Akademi award winner Su. Venkatesan (Kaval Kottam) and translated into English by Harvard University’s Tamil studies preceptor, Jonathan Ripley, the comic is also aided by editor A.R. Venkatachalapathy’s brilliance in providing context to the story through the smaller historical facts around the events. These tidbits are packaged as little pullouts on the page and publisher Vikatan Graphics should be praised for excellent and innovative production quality.
Chandrahasam , the sword given by Shiva to Ravana, with its fish insignia, is the symbol of Pandyan sovereignty. Its specific role in the story will unfold in succeeding volumes. While the larger story will perhaps cover the famous defence of Madurai against Alaudin Khilji’s general Malik Khafur, this volume deals with the politics within the Pandyan empire that led to the invasion.
The characters do not trouble a weary mind with too much nuance: Aging king, bad son, scheming friend, good son, hot wife, jealous neighbours, fearsome invaders. Archetypal characters are a great tool to tell a story as broad as this one, but archetypal characters need to be backed by a great story and entertaining dialogue. Here, while the story is great, it is predictable and the dialogues insipid. Ripley’s translation, too, leaves much to be desired and even irritates the reader in some places with obvious errors in tense. Trajan Pro, the typeface used for the text, fails miserably, not least due to the fact that it is a font with no lower case letters that’s used primarily for Hollywood DVD covers. Also, it is a typeface inspired from Roman columns. To use it to tell a Pandyan story is like frying vadais in olive oil.
The illustrations are both the book’s strength and its weakness. Landscapes and cityscapes are clearly Balashanmugan’s strength. Their drawing is bold and the result magnificent. His characters, however, are laboured drawings that utterly fail in facial expressions. And sadly it is expressions that differentiate a visual screenplay from a comic book. Similarly, his ink-work is thick and effortless, a delight for the reader and the critic, but the colouring fails due to gaudiness, which takes attention away from the beautiful strokes The style is dated and gives the book a low-end feel. And kitschy is not the way to go when a book is priced at Rs. 1,500. It must be noted, however, that despite being let down by bad textual narration, the panels manage to single-handedly take the story in the desired direction.
Chandrahasam has to be lauded for the scope of its vision, and the cultural and historical significance of the story it seeks to tell. (I was thrilled to bits when I read about Marco Polo visiting Kulasekara Pandya’s court.) With better writing and a style guide for colouring, this could have been a collector’s item. Instead, it remains yet another effort that’s ambitious in scope but let down by lack of consistency in execution.
While it is pleasing that there is no attempt to ape Frank Miller’s 300 (considering the similarity in content), maybe a leaf or ten could have been taken from it 300 as regards colouring and writing. All faults aside, it is still a great read. If the price were to be slashed by half, I might even go around advising people to buy it!
Chandrahasam — A War With No End; S. Venkatesan, K. Balashanmugam, Vikatan Graphic, Rs. 1,499.
