Comic misadventures

No, the title isn&rsquot ironic at all. A fifty-six-year-old out-of-work manga artist in Japan has an epiphany There are no mangas in India, an inexcusable lacuna. If I were to land up in India &mdash where I don&rsquot know a soul &mdash with a bunch of comics (not necessarily mine), have them translated into Hindi and sell them, I&rsquod be rendering a great service to the human race (or at least to a sixth of it). And, of course, I&rsquoll make a small fortune along the way.

What follows is a series of formulaic misadventures and disappointments that every foreign tourist who comes to India (or shall we just say Delhi, because the book doesn&rsquot really go beyond) is familiar with pickpocketing and the unhelpful policemen one encounters after, filthy public toilets (acutely distressing to Yamamatsu and I&rsquoll explain why in just a second), food that&rsquos too spicy, autowalas who take you for a ride, touts and sly shopkeepers galore. Of course, Yamamatsu is a bit of a long-stay atithi so there are worse horrors in store, devious real estate agents for one.

When you&rsquove sifted through this morass, there is a story. Of how India&rsquos first Hindi manga came to be (in 2005). It&rsquos a tale as heroic as it is tragic. The fruit of Yamamatsu&rsquos entrepreneurial labours was the publication of Hiroshi Hirata&rsquos gory samurai tale Chidaruma Kempo. Hardly any copies were sold. (Full disclosure I bought a copy.)

Yamamatsu&rsquos rather dogged quest will perhaps strike a chord, dryly literal though the narrative is. The manga artist had his sigmoid colon removed during a cancer operation and this has given him rather unique and precarious bowel movements, and you can enjoy a graphic description on p. 68. Or turn to chapter 24 for an experience of visiting a brothel on G.B. Road, narrated in the same persecuted vein. I&rsquod say it should be compulsory reading for the proudly Indian &mdash it&rsquos educational, seeing ourselves as others see us.

Well, what do you know &mdash stupid people never learn.