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SAUPTIK

Sauptik: Blood and Flowers is a graphic novel that provides a revisionist retelling of stories from ancient Indian epics like the Mahabharata and Puranas. It combines vivid artwork with classic storytelling to narrate events after the Kurukshetra battle from the perspective of Ashwatthama. The sequel builds upon the author's previous successful graphic novel Adi Parva: Churning of the Ocean. Through its lush visuals, it emphasizes the connections between nature and humanity. The graphic novel approaches the retelling of Indian mythology directly and thought-provokingly rather than indirectly drawing parallels.

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Sonia Sumbria
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503 views1 page

SAUPTIK

Sauptik: Blood and Flowers is a graphic novel that provides a revisionist retelling of stories from ancient Indian epics like the Mahabharata and Puranas. It combines vivid artwork with classic storytelling to narrate events after the Kurukshetra battle from the perspective of Ashwatthama. The sequel builds upon the author's previous successful graphic novel Adi Parva: Churning of the Ocean. Through its lush visuals, it emphasizes the connections between nature and humanity. The graphic novel approaches the retelling of Indian mythology directly and thought-provokingly rather than indirectly drawing parallels.

Uploaded by

Sonia Sumbria
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd

SAUPTIK

Sauptik: Blood and Flowers is a revisionist retelling of some of our oldest tales which have
inspired and guided generations of people. The sequel to Adi Parva, which was chosen as one of
2012's Best Graphic Novels by comic book historian Paul Gravett, this book combines breath-
taking art with classic storytelling. Based on the Mahabharata, the Puranas and the tradition of
oral storytellers, Sauptik is also very contemporary. The narrative, with its lush visuals,
emphasizes, over and over, our forgotten connection with the soil, with rivers, with forests, with
fire. In book one, Adi Parva: Churning of the Ocean, the celestial river Ganga narrates events
from the beginning of time and in its sequel, Sauptik: Blood and Flowers, Ashwatthama carries
the story forward after surviving the Kurukshetra battle.
SAUPTIK

Mythology remains a vast source of interesting and sometimes intimidating stories that writers
have constantly been trying to draw from. Whether it is the subtle parallels drawn from
mythology, or the more direct approach of retelling or reimagining epics and adapting them into
more contemporary narratives, both have been tried by many writers to varying degree of
success. However, Amruta Patil’s second attempt to combine the tales of Mahabharata and the
knowledge from Puranas, after the highly successful Adi Parva: Churning of the Ocean, is neither
of the two. It is one which deals with Indian mythology head on; narrating the epic we’ve known
and loved always with glorious precision and straight-forwardness.

This is why Sauptik: Blood and Flowers sets a precedent for a very different kind of mythological
retelling, one that is both devastatingly thought-provoking and disarmingly honest, one which
depends entirely on the epics themselves to impart readers with lessons on life and justice, and
the art of war.

From the very beginning, we know this isn’t going to be the usual run-of-the-mill bit of story-
telling, since Sauptik is first and foremost, a graphic novel. I’d leave the analytical scrutiny of
Amruta Patil’s artwork to those more experienced in those fields. To me, the usual reader, the
artwork serves both as a reminder of a bygone era of paintings done by artisans in a king’s court,
done on fabric and papyrus and other media, and a sense of aesthetics that is a complete
departure from the prevalent genres of digital manipulation of art. In her art, done as a mixture of
techniques ranging from watercolour to acrylic paints to charcoal to collages, battles and
scenarios come alive in their entire magnificence. She also drops the conventional rectangular
structure used in most comic books, instead experimenting with various alternatives, sometimes
splaying the art over the entirety of the pages, sometimes having multiple scenes unfold on the
same page, etc. The use of motifs and symbols of importance as depicted in the epic and
Puranas are layered and repetitive. All in all, it is a visually stimulating collection of artwork rich in
colours and details, which keeps the reader riveted throughout the entire book.

SAUPTIK

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