New graphic novel dives into migration through the eyes of an alter-ego

When we connect to Sarnath Banerjee over video call itrsquos on the second day of his return to Berlin following a ldquohecticrdquo twomonth visit to India during which he launched his new graphic novel Absolute Jafar HarperCollins Publishers India Rs 799 The house is quiet as he takes us to his kitchen where he brews tea then to his drawing desk where a solitary lamp comes to life as daylight melts into twilightThe silence is a conscious choice as Banerjee ldquorecalibrates the pace of liferdquo the very embodiment of what it means to be an immigrant straddling two very different worldsAbsolute Jafar in that sense is one of his most personal books a meditation on migration and belonging The vehicle for this tale Walking Almost semiautobiographical the book follows Banerjeersquos alter ego Bhrigu an ldquoallweather walkerrdquo as he treads through Delhirsquos streets and parties where he falls in love with a Pakistani artist This crossborder romance mdash and all the bureaucratic difficulties it comes with mdash takes the couple to Berlin where they have a son the eponymous Jafar It is at this point that we realise this book is Bhrigu walking his son through his memories of a fading home one that the teenage Berliner can barely relate toThe author has fond memories of walking around Dadar from his time in the cityAt its heart Absolute Jafar is also a tale of fatherson love This love fills the otherwise blackandwhite pages with colour every time Jafar makes an appearance It also tints Banerjeersquos voice with affection when he talks about his son Mir Ali ldquoHersquos 13 but 5rsquo 11rdquo He looks a bit scary hersquos a bit like a Husky in terms of looks but more like a Great Dane in temperamentrdquo says the authorldquoI have great hope for his generationrdquo he continues ldquoGen Alpha is kind largehearted and gutsy They have a strong sense of justice and a straight spine they go for all protests against Israel They also read more and antitechnology I guess somewhere Millennial and Gen X parents got it rightrdquoBanerjee who coparents Mir Ali with his former wife Pakistani artist Bani Abidi speaks about his bond with the teenager ldquoCoparenting a child across two households creates a different kind of bond because you spend so much oneonone time Even when we go on holidays itrsquos almost romantic as his fatherrsquos world unfurls in Calcutta and his motherrsquos in Karachi Itrsquos a privilege to relearn the world through the eyes of a child growing up with so many specificities togetherrdquoOne of the most striking images from the book is of a lone cheetah in Kuno titled lsquoThe Last MigrantrsquoYou can see that in the book too as Bhrigu sees the future through Jafarrsquos lens and tries to show his son the past through his own eyesTherersquos a hilarious exchange between father and son in the book when the boy asks for a ldquosalaryrdquo for all ideas his father borrows from him it immediately takes us back to a similar childhood conversation with our parentsAnimals are another recurring motif through the book One of its most striking metaphors for the sense of displacement that comes with migration is a sketch of a cheetah standing alone in the wilderness after being flown in from Namibia The sketch is titled ldquoThe Last Migrantrdquo ldquoI read about the cheetahs that were reintroduced to Kuno National Park in Madhya Pradesh I thought of this lone cheetah in the middle of this alien landscape in this dying sunlightrdquo says Banerjee ldquoIt probably has a kidney thatrsquos not functioning because itrsquos in an alien world Itrsquos so lonely it could move one to tearsrdquoThe book jacketWhen Banerjee first moved to Berlin more than a decade ago ldquoI hated itrdquo ldquoI lost friends because I used to constantly complain I would keep looking at the weather report for Delhi and would go back every chance I gotrdquoBut over time Berlin came to be home most markedly as the city where his son was born and grew up Despite that anxieties over migration persistItrsquos not an easy time to be a migrant xenophobia and the farright wave sweeping the globe has made even erstwhile welcoming nations harder to belong in ldquoYou have to deal with hostile governments and bureaucracy People can be kicked out at any timerdquo says Banerjee ldquoBut Germany also took in fleeing Syrians when nobody else wanted to Itrsquos a grumpy city but in its own way it allowed people inrdquoBerlin is also the city ldquowhere Bangladeshis Pakistanis and Indians can fight joke fall in love with each other Itrsquos my idea of a good world Here your local nationalism falls to the side as you realise that Pakistanis or Egyptians or Mexicans or Peruvians are all lsquodesirsquo they are all brown like you and merdquoldquoThe strength of European cities is that they can accommodate so many different nationalitiesrdquo he says And yet the West has very little ldquocritical imaginationrdquo when it comes to the world outside their borders he adds ldquoI donrsquot think people can fundamentally imagine what it is like to experience the insecurity of being a little girl leaving her home because of a siren not knowing if it will still be there when she returnsrdquoDuring a talk in Berlin in 2025 he referred to this as the ldquoCritical Imagination Deficitrdquo giving the example of how protective Germans are of their children at the playground and are yet unable to rouse the same emotion for a child elsewhere ldquoIndia too suffers a lack of imagination when it comes to class he says ldquoIf yoursquore someone from the upper class or savarna caste you donrsquot actually have an imagination of what it is like to face water apartheidrdquoThe concept is at the centre of his next exhibition in Mumbai In addition he is working on a satirical cultural glossary for Absolute Jafar that will go in print for European audiences and eventually be turned into an exhibit as well