Illustrated Story Books

The brief

This is a compilation of the illustrated books and comics I’ve worked on, a mix of children’s picture books adapted from Munshi Premchand’s short stories and a longer-form comic of my own. Most were made with StoryWeaver, the open-storytelling platform from Pratham Books.

They share a sensibility: small, human stories, often about the people we overlook, the old, the bound, the unheard. Each is shown here the way it was actually made: rough first, then the working process, then the final page.

The books

Adapted from Munshi Premchand’s story of the same name, Budi Kaki is about an elderly woman ignored and mistreated by her own family, a small, bitter tale that cuts directly at how we treat the old.

A comic on the controversy around the Tamil bull-wrangling sport of Jallikattu, sitting with both sides: the farmers and communities who hold it as heritage, and the activists who see it as cruelty, with the animals in the centre of it all.

Another Premchand adaptation, two bulls who are separated, suffer under cruelty, and finally escape back to each other. A fable about friendship and the price of freedom.