Urbanity, precarity, and infrastructural violence in Mumbai: exploring the politics of repair and urban regeneration in Grafity’s wall

The present paper seeks to address precarious lives and the politics of urban repair in the city of Mumbai, in Ram V and Anand Radhakrishnan's graphic novel Grafity's Wall (2020), a coming-of-age story about four youths in the city. Through waves of urban restructuring, this paper argues, precarity has emerged as a typical mode of Mumbai's urban life and living. The work investigates the urban underworld of crime, violence, and movements of urban solidarity in the form of care for fellow human beings as well as the city, to form a 'good city'. Since comics can record events that cannot be photographed, this paper aims to use insights from comics studies to understand the concept of precarity and care. Through the characters of four marginal urban youths, the comics show the regeneration of a dilapidated city through practising urban care in the form of youth subculture and urban solidarity movement. Drawing upon theoretical insights from the 'maximum city' and 'static/kinetic city', the paper shows how Grafity's Wall transcends the walled infrastructure of 21st-century urbanism, to advance a call for the right to the city.