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A review by tbr_the_unconquered
Krishna: A Journey Within by Abhishek Singh
4.0
In a story full of passions brimming over the rim, there was this one character who preached and practiced dispassion. Amidst a maelstrom of love, hatred and bloodshed he moved with a cold and calculative precision to restore what was dharma. For his seemingly ethereal way of life, this character was given the guise of a god as the ages went by. His sharp mind metamorphosed into a cosmic intelligence and his compassion for all living beings became a sort of divine love. Krishna has had many a role put upon him and the image of a god was but one of them and interestingly enough it is the one that stuck to him most. In Abhishek Singh’s graphic novel, it is this compassion of Krishna that attains a focal point around which all other attributes of the life and times of this blue god revolves.
The art work in the book is stunning and simply too good to be ignored. If you look at it with a critical eye, one can also say that it lacks a consistency in terms of visual style. One page might show great vistas of the Kurukshetra battlefield or the city of Mathura while in the next page the characters might be depicted as cartoonish, you move on to the page that follows it and the style of art effortlessly slips into the lines of south Indian murals. This to me as a reader was a clever move and rather than serving as a deterrent, it kept me engaged and interested in where the style of art would head next. Krishna also appears in three of his most popular roles in the book : the mischievous child, the young boy in love and the man who determined who would sit on the throne of Hastinapura. Underlying all these is Krishna’s understanding and acceptance of the world around him and of all the living beings that share the world with him. There is for instance the story of Kaliya – the giant serpent and his encounter with Krishna. Myths tell us that Krishna tap-danced away on Kaliya’s hoods until the living daylights went out of the snake. In this story however Krishna makes Kaliya see the wrongness of his ways and abashed, the serpent slinks away into the muddy depths of his watery realm. There are such hints dropped all through the book about the divine nature of the character and having seen, heard and read many a rendition of the character it was hardly surprising.
Do not make the mistake of making this your starting point to know about this wonderful character or the Mahabharata. If you start here and plan to work your way back to those stories, all of this would appear gibberish to you. Work it out the other way round and you will be find a visual treat in here. It would not add on any new layers to your understanding of these characters but on these pages you see them taking a life that you have only imagined in your mind. Most of the storylines are only hinted upon and are but superficial touches upon a grand tale. In my childhood, I had encountered a series of five books which told Krishna’s life in its entirety and in here all that is distilled into a good 200 plus pages.
Interestingly, Krishna even quotes Bertrand Russell once ! When the final negotiations with the Kauravas collapse, Krishna turns to Duryodhana and remarks ”Remember this, a war is not about who is right but who is left.” And so began that monumental war !
The art work in the book is stunning and simply too good to be ignored. If you look at it with a critical eye, one can also say that it lacks a consistency in terms of visual style. One page might show great vistas of the Kurukshetra battlefield or the city of Mathura while in the next page the characters might be depicted as cartoonish, you move on to the page that follows it and the style of art effortlessly slips into the lines of south Indian murals. This to me as a reader was a clever move and rather than serving as a deterrent, it kept me engaged and interested in where the style of art would head next. Krishna also appears in three of his most popular roles in the book : the mischievous child, the young boy in love and the man who determined who would sit on the throne of Hastinapura. Underlying all these is Krishna’s understanding and acceptance of the world around him and of all the living beings that share the world with him. There is for instance the story of Kaliya – the giant serpent and his encounter with Krishna. Myths tell us that Krishna tap-danced away on Kaliya’s hoods until the living daylights went out of the snake. In this story however Krishna makes Kaliya see the wrongness of his ways and abashed, the serpent slinks away into the muddy depths of his watery realm. There are such hints dropped all through the book about the divine nature of the character and having seen, heard and read many a rendition of the character it was hardly surprising.
Do not make the mistake of making this your starting point to know about this wonderful character or the Mahabharata. If you start here and plan to work your way back to those stories, all of this would appear gibberish to you. Work it out the other way round and you will be find a visual treat in here. It would not add on any new layers to your understanding of these characters but on these pages you see them taking a life that you have only imagined in your mind. Most of the storylines are only hinted upon and are but superficial touches upon a grand tale. In my childhood, I had encountered a series of five books which told Krishna’s life in its entirety and in here all that is distilled into a good 200 plus pages.
Interestingly, Krishna even quotes Bertrand Russell once ! When the final negotiations with the Kauravas collapse, Krishna turns to Duryodhana and remarks ”Remember this, a war is not about who is right but who is left.” And so began that monumental war !