Putting a comic spin on dire situations that elude the human desire for control has for long been recognized as a coping mechanism. What can be more dire than a pandemic that is decimating lives, economies and nations around the world? This is what prompted Maya Art Space to put together Viral Visions a collection of comic strips by cartoonists from Bengal. The cartoons are as much an expression of resilience in the face of calamity as they are a way of calling out the hypocrisies of the ruling classes and the cavalier attitude of the privileged.

The spiky round mass that is the novel coronavirus has, at times, been reimagined by the cartoonists to hilarious effect. The best of these perhaps is by Soumitra Dasgupta who lines up corona-headed figures as yamduts in a strip reminiscent of the rough sketches of the variety of bhoots by Satyajit Ray. The virus becomes the unkempt outsider at the receiving end of a mob’s gleeful ire in Debabrata Chakrabarty’s creation and ends up being locked into a bottle by Sentu.

While Rituparno Basu imagines medicine vanquishing the virus, and Debasish Deb dreams of a Covid-19 free world, Partha Dasgupta’s clever minimalist strip shows a hanuman searching for — and failing to find — a sanjeevani to cure the virus. Upal Sengupta pokes fun at human vanity in the face of insurmountable odds with a man and a coronavirus both looking for a haircut.

Unfortunately, barring some exceptions, there is a noticeable element of repetitiveness in the caricatures, especially in the way the human body is imagined. Whatever happened to the dazzling variety of styles that Bengal’s illustrious cartoonists of yore used to produce?