Vidhu Vincent’s finely graphic memoir on the Emergency explores how the nadir of political behavior and rebels dare to say no in Kerala through their warm, enigmatic embrace
Malabar defies national mood Vincent’s paintings depict the reality of Kerala politics during the Emergency from a child’s point of view.
As I was reading Vidhu Vincent’s portrait and his accompanying lines on the Emergency, I wondered, with little regret, how Narendra Modi failed to ensure that trains in India ran on time! If they wanted to include Indian Railways in punctuality in May 2014, it would have given it a resounding ‘Sab Ka Saath, Sabka Vikas’ echo. I suspect the reason for this apparent failure lies elsewhere. Being a man with a vision of the future, he thought it would be better to focus his attention on smart cities and bullet trains instead of wasting precious time on India’s modern, noisy trains. Several smart cities across the country in the past seven years, and hundreds of new bullet trains crossing our vast republic at breakneck speed, testify to this well-intentioned belief.
Vidhu’s graphic memoir on the Emergency is a personal story and critique. He is actually the child of Emergency. Like ‘Midnight’s Children’, people born during the 21st are tempted to call…
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