How the comic series YogYodhas was born
It was 2017 when I was talking to Anurag Aggarwal, the then CEO of Amar Chitra Katha (a legendary Indian comics publisher). He thought it would be a good idea to introduce kids to yoga through a series in Tinkle (the children's comics magazine I was editor of for a decade). And yes, I've heard about the meaning of the name in American slang but for me it has always been the sound of tinkling bells. :)
So, I asked for time to think about it. It had been my practice to introduce a new character series in Tinkle after a lot of deliberation, taking into account the thoughts, ideas, dreams and demands in the emails from readers.
I was not sure how keen kids would be about yoga. Perhaps, I remembered the half-hearted PT lessons from school which I didn’t take too seriously. :P The only time I felt excited was when the teacher introduced lezim training, a dance form from Maharashtra using a musical instrument with cymbals on it. Though it does beg the question—why were we learning dance during physical training? Perhaps one can argue that dance is a form of physical training! :P
Anyway, I mentioned this yoga series to my team and asked them to come up with ideas. In the meanwhile, I had been thinking about it too. I usually don't like preaching to kids based on the simple principle that when I was a kid I didn’t like being preached at. :P But how does one interest kids in something so serious?
Then I did what I like to do as part of spinning my stories—I got down to research. I read about yoga which led to many, many rabbit holes (as research often goes!). One rabbit hole led me to martial arts related to yoga, primarily kalaripayattu from Keralam. I could feel tiny light bulbs sparking through my brain. What if I combined yoga with kalaripayattu and added in a dose of fantasy, my favourite genre?
But that was not enough for me. Now, I wanted to put in my two bits to get kids thinking about issues that I feel strongly about. In this case, I wanted to look at diversity from the lens of birthmarks which are often considered unpleasant to look at. From there I dreamt up these siblings who are bullied by their classmates because of these birthmarks (in their case seven of them!). To be fair, they are also bullied because they are favoured by some of their teachers (Ustads) at the school-sanctuary (VidyAshray). :P
Thus were born Bir and Bala. I got their names from Birbal, the wise minister in Emperor Akbar’s court though my duo are completely lacking in that fine quality. :D I also wanted something pan Indian, so Bir is a name from the north while Bala is a common enough name for girls in the south.
I didn’t want Bala conforming to gender norms. So, as is the case with the female lead in the first book I wrote, Bala is ill-tempered, stubborn, impulsive, with no respect for boundaries. Plus, she is quarrelsome to boot. Actually, pugnacious is a nice adjective for her. :D The way she irritates her brother and the way they end up quarrelling may have been influenced by the spectacular fights between my younger sister, Swapna, and me when we were kids. (More on this in another blog! :D)
I thought the south along with the north east were under-represented in mainstream stories. I had kalaripayattu anyway, so I set the story in Kerala. Now, as mentioned in my Wayanad blogs, I had been quite taken by the bamboo island of Kuruvadweep. So, that was where I set the story.
After that, a storm of ideas descended upon me which had me writing furiously. I ended up with a story arc that was enough to span two Tinkle years which is a monthly magazine. I had a surprise in the climax, a hook, to mark the end of the first year.
The story begins from when Bir and Bala meet a stranger and discover hidden powers connected to their birthmarks. I pitched the idea and story arc to my team, took feedback and that was how YogYodhas was born.
The super talented artist, Vineet Nair brought the twins and the world to life. Considering we both have our roots in Kerala, we had great discussions on the karalipayattu fight sequences I sent his way for reference. As well as the fabulous colours by Sachin Adhare and innovative letters by Prasad Sawant.
If you're interested, do check out the graphic novel YogYodhas 01: Warriors of the Spirit, compiling all the stories in this arc.
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