What do you expect from a “superhero workshop”? Chit chat on Batman and Spiderman, perhaps? Well yes, but this one workshop at Busy Busy Academy was, above all, about life lessons in comic strip.
The kids’ event was held at the AB Block centre, jointly by Lalit Kumar Sharma, a Delhi-based comic book artist, and Priyanka Chatterjee, a storyteller from Calcutta.
Lalit shared his life story with the kids while sketching the same on a whiteboard throughout. “I’ve been drawing since I was three. My art tutor taught me to draw a kite, and I began replicating it in various styles in all my books,” Lalit recalled. “No one at home noticed until the day my school teacher sent a note home saying, ‘Don’t dirty your notebook.’ So, I left that page blank and started drawing on the next one,” he said.
When scolded, Lalit began tearing pages from his books to draw. To stop this, his parents started numbering the pages. “But my pencil was my superpower and I had to use it. So, I started drawing on pages from my sister’s books! The moral of the story is that where there’s a will, there’s a way. People complain they don’t have fancy brushes or costly pencils to make good sketches. Nonsense! Even if you have no pencil, you can draw on sand. So don’t wait for life to bring opportunities on a platter. Just start!”
Lalit created his first comic book while still in primary school, but it was ridiculed by everyone. “I didn’t care what others thought, and before I knew it, I’d made 40 comic books. And when you keep doing something, you get better. By the time I was 17 or 18, I was good enough to approach publishing houses with my work,” said the artist who has worked on superheroes like Shaktiman for Indian publications like Raj and Diamond, graphic novels as well as for DC and Marvel Comics.
Again, the lesson here is that before excelling at something, one has to endure a period of not being good at it. “Those who are good at something today are simply the ones who didn’t stop practising,” said the artist, who was himself wearing a shirt adorned with cartoons.
The participants were then asked about their favourite animated characters. They mentioned Dory from Finding Nemo, He-Man, Percy Jackson…. “Every character you like has something interesting about them and is relatable,” said Lalit, who then challenged the kids to pick a “boring” subject and make it fun.
They chose the ceiling and began suggesting things to add to it. Ironically, the sillier or more childish the suggestion, the more Lalit seemed to appreciate it. So when someone suggested adding 10 CCTV cameras to the ceiling, Lalit said it would make the reader think: “Why 10? Why not just one? There could be a story behind it.”
When someone else proposed adding a door to the ceiling, Lalit asked them to imagine what kind of creature would forego a regular door and climb up to one on the ceiling. “To make something interesting, you have to make people curious about it. The ceiling has now become a character and you can create a story around it. This is what was done with films like Transformers and Cars,” he said.
Lalit said parents do not need to push children into art or anything else. “Simply expose them to all possibilities so they can choose what they like. And break stereotypes. For instance, people think if someone is good at art, they’re bad at studies. I wasn’t,” Lalit added.
He also acknowledged that there are many different kinds of artists. “Cartoonist R.K. Laxman focused on the idea, painter Raja Ravi Varma on cultural representation, Madhubani artists focus on the celebration of religion without caring whether the anatomy of figures is right... You have the right to be any kind of artist,” Lalit said.
Priyanka narrated the stories and games that Lalit illustrated. “Art and storytelling are complementary media. We see their combination in forms like patachitra and even cave paintings, where through art cavemen depicted stories of predators and prey,” she said.
The duo then encouraged the children to draw their own superheroes. Ishan Das of Class V sketched one inspired by Percy Jackson, while Stuti Maitra of Class III drew a magic chair. Meanwhile, Lalit drew his superhero, who wore neither cape nor costume. “I’ve drawn Rohan Ramchandra Bahir, a teenager who won last year’s Pradhan Mantri Rashtriya Bal Puraskar for bravery. The boy had dived into a river to save a drowning woman. For me, the essence of a superhero is not in his power but in his ability to serve society,” Lalit remarked.
