For journalist-writer Reetika Revathy Subramanian and illustrator Maitri Dore, it was a shared interest in “under-represented, indigenous feminism” that brought them together in the thick of the pandemic. An open call by Goethe-Institut (Indonesia) in 2020, inviting comic artists from around the world to submit book proposals on lesser-known feminist leaders from the Global South, as part of its Movements and Moments project, served as the impetus. Subramanian, 31, who is currently pursuing her PhD in Gender Studies as a Gates Cambridge Scholar at the University of Cambridge, UK, says the pair wanted to focus on the links between gender, agriculture, and climate change. “This is because even as women grow nearly 80 per cent of India’s food, they are not recognised as farmers; they don’t even own the land they till.”

During fieldwork in the Marathwada region of Maharashtra, she had chanced upon the work of Godavari Dange, a tour de force in the Osmanabad district. “But, there was very little known about her, except for stray mentions on a few blogs. Her work had largely gone unnoticed by the mainstream media,” she shares, explaining why Dange seemed like the perfect candidate for their storytelling project. “Maitri and I went to meet her, and then, based on her consent, we decided to send in our application.”