Visualizing carnivalesque - caste and grotesque realism in Aparajita Ninan and Srividya Natarajan's A Gardener in the Wasteland

Drawing on Mikhail Bakhtin’s concept of carnivalesque and grotesque realism, this paper argues that the graphic novel, A Gardener in the Wasteland (2011), destabilizes traditional hierarchies. The paper presents the novel as a creative and literary work that repositions perspectives, visually and textually, by placing different timelines, spaces, sensibilities, aesthetics, and idioms together to underscore the pervasiveness and multidimensionality of caste oppression. The sequential art form employs various nuances such as grotesque, cartoonish images, interesting fonts, and speech bubbles to represent and symbolize subversion. This ‘visual’ carnivalesque manifests itself satirically within the liminal space of an inverted world which invites laughter by assigning the informal slang and cultural motifs of contemporary times to the 19th-century Hindu social order. The art also simultaneously elevates Dalits from the mire and filth with which the upper castes equate them. A Gardener in the Wasteland is explored as an alternative educative voice within the tradition of Indian comics. Education as a remedy to casteism is not just the novel’s subject but an objective; it tries to achieve through its form. The paper utilizes the carnivalesque literary mode to celebrate the rebellion engraved in the novel’s impactful narrative and witty visual imagery.