His Wondrous Capers

For Graphic Novelist Sarnath Banerjee, the Journeys He Takes in His Mind Are as Colourful as Those Taken in Calcutta, Congo and Berlin

- Kareena Gianani

The first whiff of the great beyond, of lands unseen and unimagined, reached Banerjee when NRI relatives visiting his Calcutta home in the 1980s threw open their suitcases. They carried it all the way from Dum Dum Airport to Banerjee’s childhood home, that enchanting transcontinental smell, far out of the reach of a boy who had never stepped onto an airplane.

“That sense of longing for foreign lands came in suitcases the size of a Paris apartment. And when we waved them goodbye from the airport gallery, they took it with them. Many years later, the same smell hit me when I landed at Heathrow airport, and I realised it was the smell of washing powder mingled with perfume!” laughs Banerjee on a phone call from Berlin, a city he calls home since 2011.

WAYS OF SEEING