What is your new graphic novel, The Barn Owl’s Wondrous Capers about?
The Barn Owl’s… (Penguin, Rs 395) is set in 18th century Calcutta, with its drunken religiosity and excessive eccentricity and wealth. It is replete with a mystery and intrigue and a sense of history. That history is not the history of textbooks. It is pedestrian history, history of the streets. Like how did a carriage of that era appear or what did the pankhawallas talk about. It may be literary, but there is a perverted magic to it, as it can slip into fantasy at any time.

The city is an important metaphor in your work. Corridor was set in Delhi and now Barn Owl’s… is set in Calcutta.
I’m a fan of Ibn Battuta, who moved from city to city, almost as if to prove that his native city in Morocco was the best. For me, Calcutta is the city. But I’ve always been fascinated by all the cities I’ve lived in. I’m interested in getting to the psychic core of the city and also how living in a city is almost a conspiracy. I love highlighting its vanishing races. Like the plumbers in Delhi or the electricians and telephone cleaners in Calcutta. You stumble upon them unexpectedly, yet they are vanishing, as society becomes homogenous.

Why is it said that the graphic novels is the narrative form of the future?
That’s because everybody is looking for an engaging reading experience. People are wary of thick literary books. Stories that are being told now and the ones that will be told in the future will be very incident-oriented.

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