In 1993, a Maltese-American journalist named Joe Sacco released a comic book called Palestine, and pioneered a new type of journalism. Combining journalism, history and satire, Sacco’s work uses the comic format to investigate serious, real-world conflicts, putting you in the shoes of Palestinians in 1990s Gaza, or Bosniaks trapped in the safe enclave of Goraลพde. He re-imagined the comics as a form of truth-telling that felt more authentic and immersive than the written word of newsprint, or even the static single images of photojournalism.
You can see more than a hint of Sacco’s influence in the work of Sumit Kumar, the founder of webcomic and animation studio Bakarmax. His comicsโparticularly the particular cartoons he did for independent news site NewsLaundryโalso attempt to retell Indian history in a similar vein, combining extensive research and reporting with satirical wit and snark. His graphhic novels on the Kashmir conflict (Kashmir Ki Kahani) and the Naxalite movement (Amar Bari Tomar Bari Naxalbari) are notable for the way they tackle these fraught, complex topics with empathy, humour and intellectual rigour.
The more nerdy comedy fans among us might also remember that Bakarmax published Karejwa, a webcomic written by Varun Grover (and edited by Kumar). But if all else fails, there’s always Shark Tank. Kumar appeared on the show as a contestant in 2022, and charmed everyone with his easygoing manner and good humour. He might not have bagged an investment, but it gave him and Bakarmax a big publicity boost. So much so that when he launched a Kickstarter campaign to fund the project Aapki Poojitaโan adult animated series akin to The Truman Showโpeople contributed in large numbers.
The cartoonist and animator used those resources to put together a pilot episode and screened it to a select group that “laughed till they had tears in their eyes”. Read on to know more about the upcoming series, Kumar’s stint as a standup comedian, his collaboration with Varun Grover and where the name Bakarmax came from.
How did you get interested in comic books, cartoons and animation?
My father is a retired banker. When he was still working, he was transferred to Kolkata, in the Bara Bazar area. Over there, this person had this great idea of starting a comic book renting shop. I still wonder who he thought his customer base was. He used to rent out 10 comics for INR 10 and my father made the mistake of bringing some over one day.
That’s what started the craze. I kept asking my father to bring more and I eventually went through everything that he had at the shop. I would also occasionally sketch things. But it never amounted to anything. Nobody from my family had ever ventured into the art or business industry. So I just forgot about this.
Eventually, when I was in my second year of engineering and also studying for the UPSC entrance exam, I was getting extremely bored. That’s when I started doodling and drawing on the walls of my hostel room and writing jokes. Because these are the two things that I really lovedโtelling jokes and making cartoons. Someone who stayed in my hostel saw this and mentioned that I should consider cartooning as a career. Till then I had no idea people could get paid to draw things. But that’s when I started looking around for work, writing for people and now here I am.
Do you remember any of the comics books that first got you hooked?
Tinkle, Amar Chitra Katha, Chacha Chaudhary all had a huge impact on me. But beyond that, anything that he could get, I would read. There was no limit. I remember, someone had published a 3-D comic for which you needed those special glasses. I read that too without the glasses. Then I remember this very unique book in which unhone Dharmendra ki picturon ke screenshot lekar uske dialogue caption mein likhenge. I read that too.
Up until then I was limited to Hindi publications though. But when I joined Twenty Onwards Media, which is the company that started Comic Con India, I was introduced to graphic novels by my boss. He had a great library that I started reading through. And that’s how I was exposed to the limitless comedy that you could achieve through this medium.
Humour also plays a huge role in your work. What first got you interested in comedy?
Humour is my primary identity. Just the other day I was thinking of using my original surname and stop using Kumar, which is a name that Dalits take on to hide themselves. But that is not my real identity. Laughter, jokes and humour are. It’s like my temple. I think of it as very holy, almost in a religious way. My goal in life is to reach a point where I don’t speak a sentence of actual honest truth in a day.
You also did a little standup early on. What was that experience like?
Yes, I started standup in 2009. At the time, Papa CJ used to organise open mics. Abish [Mathew] was sort of the person who got me into standup. At the time I was writing my first graphic novel. And my boss had asked me to look into the standup comedy scene and do a little research on open mics because even he was interested. I went for one, I went for another and then suddenly I had been in the game for almost two years.
I loved it quite a bit, it helped me improve my comic timing and thinking. But it also used to get boring because every night the comics would do the same jokes. I didn’t enjoy this aspect of standup. That’s what I like about comicsโwhere once I’ve put it down on paper, I have recorded my bit. Anybody can pay to read it at that point.
And another thing that irked me was that it was a very upper middle-class space. Even today it’s the same but the people are living in this delusion that they are middle-class. And it just kept getting sadder. A Gujarati would make jokes about Gujaratis, A Punjabi about Punjabis… I just respect the art form so much that I couldn’t stand this. Even today there are so few comics whom I really like. There’s Punit Pania and Gaurav Kapoor. Kapoor is so authentic. It doesn’t feel like he’s seeing what is working for others and doing it. Internationally, I also absolutely love Andy Kaufman.
Speaking about authenticity, a lot of your work also highlights Dalit issues. How much of your work is informed by your identity?
I’ll answer this by telling you about an experience I had recently at Ziro Music Festival. They had organised a parallel event there called Ziro Lit Fest. And in the distance, you could hear people repeat the words “North East”, “marginalised” and “tribes” 20 times a day on the mic. Comedians might be exempt from taking themselves too seriously but literature festivals are all about that. So these words kept cropping up again and again.
Now, this was happening in Arunachal Pradesh and most of the audience included students from the college where the event was taking place. Most of them were tribals. So, when I went up to talk, I spoke about how a lot of people expect us to only talk about being Dalit or SC/ST for our entire lives because that’s who we are. So they feel good that they are making good on the evils that their ancestors inflicted upon ours and we feel good about being given a voice. But that’s not the truth.
We want to talk about things other than our identities. Because as far as representation goes, whatever I write, it will be from my experiences. I don’t have to keep reminding people of who I am. And it’s not like we are born with all the knowledge about these subjects to begin with. Odds are we might know just as little as the next person about our history. We are all learning with time. That’s why I wrote books about Kashmir and the Naxal conflictโto avoid being pigeon-holed. Because people are very quick to turn you into a token. They might want to help and have no malice at heart but there are stories of many kinds and people should have the opportunity to tell us that.
Since you touched upon it, ‘Amar Bari Tomar Bari Naxalbari’ is a pretty brave attempt at condensing a complicated, controversial part of recent Indian history into a graphic novel. How challenging was that?
So, it really helps that I’m an absolute dumbf*ck. So I didn’t know the scale of the thing that I was saying yes to. Conan O’Brien has this fundaโsay yes, figure it out later. In the same vein, I said yes and then I realised the scale of the thing. It broke me down. Honestly, by the time it was done, I was in deep depression. Because you’re reading so much material and doing so much research and only 20 percent of it makes it to the final draft.
When and how did Bakarmax come into existence? Also, how did you come up with the name?
So, like I said, the Naxalbari comics had taken a toll on me and I thought I’ll take a break from cartooning. That’s when I had joined advertising briefly. And I know a lot of people in the industry crib about how difficult advertising is but it is so easy yaar. You say anything, you get a salary at the end of the month, you are told what to do. But during this time I didn’t want my comics to die down. So I started a web comic with the goal of releasing one comic every one-two weeks.
Around that time, a friend of mine and I were driving down somewhere and we were talking about something so stupid and weird that “bullsh*t” felt like a compliment for it. So we were trying to think of word that encapsulated the pointlessness of our conversation and that’s how we thought of “bakarmax”.
It remained my personal webcomic for two years till I quit my advertising job and returned to cartooning full-time. In 2020, Bakarmax was registered as a private limited company. I hired some people and turned it into a studio where we also did animation. Since then our goal has been to make good web comics, and turn those into graphic novels or animated shorts. And our final goal is to make an adult animated series in India and show people that there is a market for this content in the country.
One of my favourite Bakarmax comics is Karejwa. How did that collaboration with Varun Grover take place?
We had made a comic called Chaar Ram which Varun had read and liked. So he had sent us his blog and asked if we would like to use any of his stories and turn them into a comic. And Karejwa really stood out for me because who would think of mixing gulab jamuns and science fiction?
It’s not just thatโit’s also a very well-written story. Even today I feel like it’s a masterpiece. You know how people say Deewar is a masterclass in screenplay? I feel like Karejwa is a masterclass in short story writing.
You also found yourself on Shark Tank India. How was that experience? Did that open the door to more clients?
How Shark Tank happened was, I had a colleague who mentioned that the show was coming to India. At the time, I used to watch the American version during my lunch breaks. They had put up a Google form on Sony’s Facebook page for registrationsโthat’s literally how they started. That colleague filled out the form, they called for some things, we sent them those things and they called us for an audition in Delhi.
I was wary of auditioning, but I also had salaries to pay so I didn’t fight it. And after that round, they called us to Mumbai for the final shoot. There were numerous people in suits telling us what to say. But we also had writing experience so we pushed back and wrote our own intros and such. There were these investment bankers grilling us about our numbers before we went in front of the sharks. And finally, you saw what happened in front of them. Luckily, I was reading a book about Barack Obama at the time and I was instilled with some good energy so I kept quiet and took their feedback.
After that appearance, the following week was crazy. We got a sense of what national attention feels like. Through my comics I had some sense of the scale of our country but that day I got a taste of what big celebrities go through everyday. And I feel bad for them now. But we did get some clients out of it and the company got some name recognition.
You also have an animated show called Aapki Poojita in the works. Can you fill us in on that project?
Yeah, we’re chipping away at it a day at a time and hopefully it should be ready in a year-and-a-half. It’s going to be a six-episode series. We raised 25 percent of the budget from Kickstarter and we need quite a lot of capital. For which we are meeting platforms and people. But we used the money we had to finish one episode and screened it for some people. And keeping my bias aside, people did laugh a lot, to the extent that they had tears in their eyes.
We are really proud of the episode and the casting that we have done. For example, for Poojita we have cast Sana Saeed who played little Anjali in Kuch Kuch Hota Hai. We also have Rahul Ram for one episode. And the animation standards that we have managed to achieve are a notch higher than some international shows, I would say.
Now we’re looking to speak with co-producers and streaming platforms. But I am also going to pitch this at a convention I’m attending in the United States because I know I won’t have to sell them on the idea of an adult animated series. I would love to talk to someone there. Let’s see how it goes. That’s the big project we have currently.
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