chatak
Graphic Illustration by Abiral Kumar and Mainak Mitra
Sarag Dida, Paani De! Paani!
Brother sky, water! Give me water!
These verses from a Garhwali folk song animate the story. The etiological myth of the Chatak bird ends with the metamorphosis of a girl cursed by her cattle perishing from thirst to be forever condemned to similar craving that can only be quenched by raindrops falling from the sky.
Following the theme of the issue, we trace the shapes of pause | collect | sustain by filling out the negative spaces between them. In other words, our attempt is to understand these interlinked ideas by tracing out their opposite, but intrinsically related, and equally defining, notions of movement | scatter | surrender. Our short graphic narrative follows the movement of a small chatak bird across the city and its neighbourhood areas in search of water.
