Elseworlds

World-building is important and if one can’t do it for a greater narrative, one must do it individually for at least himself. I have seen quite a few worlds, and I have habit a of discovering new worlds through books and comic books. Since about fifteen years new worlds have stopped being made in in this country, people would argue it is not so but then they are missing out on something very crucial that I did not miss out on. In the past decade I have realized that there is systemic gatekeeping of aesthetics and comfortable narratives for the lower classes of this country and if you look at it the game is extremely simple, keeping the lower classes busy with hand to mouth and the middle classes busy with family problems and relatives. It was baffling to me that people in this country were being governed according to presets, like as if they were animals but as the truth became clearer all my bafflement was gone and acceptance took place, people in fact are animals for those who govern lives of people in this country. Comics in this country, especially indigenous comics, have disappeared. Here is a task, get yourself a comic of The Sadhu series, or Devi, both created by Shekhar Kapur and compare the depth of their worlds to anything that is present in the market today. You can also get yourself a copy of Odayan while you do that. Things got funnier when I realised that beauty is not only being gatekept from the lower classes but also being deleted from them, permanently. Folk cultures became the first casualty of this approach. The game is simple, torture the ones who carry the authentic culture of the land the most and let them carry the burden of culture while exploiting them the maximum. Here is the latest trick in the business, make entertainment too have real stakes and so entertainment too in the past decade is true crime like Burari Murders, movies on Aarushi murder case like Talwar, and series like Paataal Lok and Mirzapur. You might have noticed that escapist and fantastical cinema and TV have almost disappeared from indigenous media and now only remains in form of foreign media like Marvel and DC and other science fiction and fantasy properties. I miss the time when the kids used to read comics, especially indigenous comics. I, as a child, have read some great comics that too in Hindi and I have also experienced the world of American superheros and European literary writers. The last time I saw good world-building in Indian comics and literature was in early 2012. Indian indigenous comics is dead by now and Indian literary scene is now populated by rich housewives who have nothing better to do. Escapism, in this country, is not even an option anymore and anyway those who used to indulge in escapism, especially the 90s kids, are feeling the brunt of the reality today the most. Personally, my primary goal as a writer was to write and create fiction and I started suffering severe writing blocks in the mid 2010s which I later realised that was of political origin and it is very recently I realised that I can bypass the creative and writing block through storyboarding. Good for me as a writer, I guess. I think one must find their worlds, and if they don’t exist or are being charged tickets or taxes for visiting or inhabiting them, one must create their own. Art doesn’t exist in vacuum and the difference between art and propaganda is that you don’t have to pay tax on getting inspired form art.