‘Can You See Her the Way I Do?’: (Feminist) Ways of Seeing in Amruta Patil’s Kari (2008)

Abstract

Amruta Patil’s Kari (2008), the very first Indian graphic novel in English by a woman, is groundbreaking for multiple reasons. For one, it brings to the Indian graphic arena an ‘unusual protagonist’, a ‘young, deeply introverted, asocial and queer woman — counterpoint to the hyper feminine prototypes one keeps coming across’, as Patil remarks in an interview with Paul Gravett. Secondly, as an experimental text influenced by multiple media such as art styles from across cultures and many literary and graphic texts, Patil’s work also generates a rich narrative that visualises the many moods of its reclusive protagonist, in a powerful, intertextual way. The heteroglossia, combined with an experimental use of ‘ink, marker, charcoal and oilbar, crayon and found images’, captures Kari’s psychological landscape in all its complexity, creating a unique narrative framed by her interiority. In turn this creates a distinct way of seeing (other characters, places and events) through the eyes of this unusual protagonist. This article engages with both its unusual protagonist, and distinct narrative style, and poses the following question: in what ways does this experimental text appropriate the act of looking? How does it resist hegemonic, masculinist modes of seeing through this? The article interrogates the ways in which the text, that celebrates fluidity and exploration, 1) resists masculinist prescriptiveness through its protagonist’s unusualness and unconventionality, and 2) how through its protagonist’s unusual gaze generates new, potentially feminist ways of seeing through the lens of love, affection and curiosity.