BongAlways

If you are a Bengali who thrived when a misguided economic well-being did not threaten your mother tongue to its core, there is absolutely no chance that you have not been a part of the love that we always showed for detectives. We had our own Byomkesh, Feluda, Kiriti Roy, we had Sherlock and his overtly British demeanour. All of them possessed certain traits that were either something we had or something we desired. But among them, was an intrepid reporter from Brussels, who, without being something resembling our desires, burst into fame and remained famous ever since. The impact was so huge that it startled the creator of the character itself. He, always proclaiming that Tintin was his soul and that the character will cease to exist after him, was shocked by the love Tintin received from this tiny part of the world.

"I receive a lot of mail from India. Here, in my office, are two letters from Calcutta. Now, what can there be in common between a boy in Calcutta and myself?"

Why or how this tryst with Tintin started, is still a mystery to me.

In fact, the whole of India has always been a big admirer of Tintin. So much so, it has been such a crowd puller that Sony decided to release Spielberg’s Adventures of Tintin (2011) in India six weeks before it’s official release in USA. The movie still stands to be the highest grossing animated film in the country and also the animated feature film to receive the biggest opening ever. The comic books, adapted in Hindi around 2010, became and instant success and still remains to be one of the most sold comic series of all time.

However, that has not been the first time when Tintin spoke an Indian Language. Thirty years before it’s Hindi translation, Tintin was translated in a Bengali magazine, called Anandamela, for the first time. Aveek Sarkar, the same person who recently became famous through the comments made by our honourable CM, was the person who travelled the distance to meet Herge and ask for the rights to translate Tintin in Bengali. Till today, all the 23 translated versions released by Ananda Publishers remains to be an essential part of a Bengali childhood. Coincidentally, the first time I came to know about Tintin was not from one his stories or any news article. It was through one of my childhood heroes, the detective I have mentioned previously, Satyajit Ray’s Feluda. Ray, one of the biggest representatives of Bengali mindset, was a huge admirer of Tintin himself. His wonderfully woven brainchild Feluda, not only speaks about Tintin in several occasions, but somehow loosely resembles him in a lot of ways.

But why has Tintin always been so impactful? To answer that, we must know who Herge was, in what period was Tintin created and what were the stories trying to tell. Being born on 1907 in Belgium, George Remi a.k.a Herge was always destined to be living in midst of everything the three unimaginable decades presented the world with. Yes, Herge was there all through the world wars and was allegedly arrested for being a Nazi collaborator. Tintin was first published in 1929, but his story starts before that, when Herge started creating illustrations for the first time. Sources state Herge started creating illustrations during his school days as a protest against the German troops who occupied Belgium back then, during the First World War. However, the first notable published illustrations of Herge was about a boy-scout named Totor, who was inspired from his teen days as a boy scout. We can, therefore, safely assume that Totor, was the stepping stone that eventually lead to creation of Tintin. But that is not the same version of Tintin we all love and admire. The first three books (Tintin in the Land of Soviets (1930), Tintin in Congo (1931) and Tintin in America (1932)) were created with the initial beliefs that Herge possessed. Land of Soviets was about the ills of communism whereas Tintin in Congo, a brilliant portrayal of the diamond mining in Africa, was in itself way too racist than what is acceptable today. Tintin in America was a masterpiece though, and it was the one that perhaps cemented Tintin’s position in the world on Comics. The books portrayal of Native Americans, the Al Capone resemblances along with the attention to details makes it the most selling telling book till date.

Then, in 1934, came Cigars of Pharaoh. For the world, it introduced Rastapopoulos, Tintin’s nemesis and who’s similarity with stereotypical anti-Semitic portrayals will be talked about for a few decades. For us, it introduced India through Tintin’s eyes when the reporter’s plane crashed in a deep forest and he had to find his way out by becoming the official doctor of an elephant herd. The caricatures were what you can expect from a European of that time. The main villain is half-naked Fakir who throws darts mixed in a poison called Rajaija and makes the victim mad. The king of Gaipajama opposes opium trade and almost dies, Snowy is almost killed for abusing a holy cow. Not the ideal eh? So, anyone with the slightest idea of the rift between India and China can understand what comes next when the poppies are mentioned. But that was never the case. Why? Because in order to study the Orient, Herge was introduced to a Chinese named Zhang, the man who later became his best mate and can be credited for helping Tintin find his way.

The Blue Lotus (1936) starts where Cigars of Pharaoh ended and talks about the real China that was never talked about. Starting with the opium trade, Herge slowly shifts away to talk about Japans invasion of Manchuria and eventually, the second world war. The portrayal in so overwhelmingly wonderful, specially from an outsider, that it can be categorised as masterpiece similar to Spielberg-Christian Bale’s magnificent storytelling of Empires of the Sun.

Before WWII started and Belgium surrendered to German invasion, Herge wrote two more books (The Broken Ear and The Black Island) where the narrative primarily focused on adventure rather than politics. In 1939, just when the world prepared for WWII, Tintin saves Syldavia from a fascist leader in King Ottokar’s Sceptre. But the war meant Herge would eventually work under Nazi supervision and that was the case. Tintin goes up against a rich American Jewish man in The Shooting Star (1942). However, the books that followed this, namely The Secret of the Unicorn and Red Rackham’s Treasure (1943-44), are considered to be his best works. Soon, WWII ended and Herge became a free man of the free world. Only, he was barred from creating Tintin because of his status as a Nazi collaborator.

Have you heard of a parody called Tintin in the Land of Nazis?

Fortunately, though, the world was lenient on Herge. After few years, he was allowed to write. Then came the Seven Crystal Balls (1948) and Prisoners of the Sun (1949), where Tintin meets the Incas. Land of the Black Gold (1951) talked about oil crisis way before it’s time, Destination Moon and Explorers on the Moon (1953-54) made Tintin walk on moon way before Armstrong, Calculus Affair(1956) showed us cold war and Tintin in Tibet (1960) was all about finding a lost friend Chang (or, should we say Zhang from China?). Herge was so magnificent with his imagination as well as realisation of the world, the none of these stories fall out of place when compared with real history. Here, in Tintin in Tibet, we see a picturization of a New Delhi bazaar, so accurate and mesmerising, that you can almost forget the pent-up anger from what you read about India previously.  

So, after all this, why do we Indians still love Tintin when we are so bored to talk about the World Wars? 

Maybe it is because of how we have lived over the years. 

We, the modern Indians, are descendants of countless wars that waged within our boundaries for centuries and still, our recent history is all about the 200 years of colonialism and small battles for the sake of independence. In that time, towards the end of the British rule, the world wars waged from America to Turkey to Japan. We were the biggest army of WWII and yet none of the folklore reeks of India. So, like Eve’s never-ending quench for the forbidden fruit, we have always been attracted to the politics around the world that never affected our daily lives. Be it the world wars, the oil crisis or the cold war. Heck Armstrong is perhaps more popular than Rakesh Sharma today. That is what precisely Herge did to us. He talked about the biggest crisis in simplest of way. It was a mixture of satire, truth, fantasy and romanticism. We drank it all.

Or maybe it is because of what Tintin resembled. 

He was not a superhero. He was a decent looking reporter from somewhere beyond kaalapani, who has no ill vices, does the right thing, dresses neatly and most importantly wander in the land of unknown without any fear. He has a job for which he earns enough money to sponsor his trips, without a father asking him about his goals in life and a mother asking him to tie the knot. Plus, he does not talk about romance, neither mentally nor physically. Isn’t he the perfect gateway to the dreams we have always dreamt for ourselves? In Bengal, he came early with the taste of wanderlust, mystery and subtle remarks about politics. The three things that catches our imagination within a second. Moreover, being an ideal representation of a Bengali mother’s perfect child helped him fly into a little child’s bookshelf. From where he never disappeared, just got passed down from one generation to the other.

Moving out of the literature, let us talk about the technicalities. With his brilliant brush and realisation of perspective, Herge talks about the society at large, it’s functions, barriers and all those hard terms an economist use in a such a simple words and pictures that makes you feel at ease while brushing through them. You don’t realise, but your subconscious does and stores it, and redirects you to that same picture over and over again. Remember the brilliant picturization of Moon, the detailed underwater see through the shark-shaped submarine, or, my favourite, the wonderfully detailed picturization of a make-believe Inca King’s Diwan-e-Aam when Tintin and co. accidentally barges in. The side characters did their part as well. Haddock was as funny as he was serious. He was honest, comical, painfully drunkard, yet something about him made you follow his footsteps. Or else, billions of blistering barnacles will head your way. Calculus was genius lost in his own life. Bianca was ever-reliable, Thompson twins were the ever-humorous.

Tintin was a mixture of everything. 

He taught us politics, he taught us history, he taught us science, astronomy as well as companionship. Personally, he taught me what quarantine stands for, where llamas are found, why an elephant trumpets, why glasses break when Bianca Sings. He was also my primer to calculus.

For nation that has always aspired more than it could grasp, a small Polynesian boy became the ray of hope and continues to do so, with flying colours. For the young kids who either loved or hated to read, Tintin gave their imaginations the fuel it required.

So, as an ode to the millions who tread this path before me, and to the billions to follow after, I hereby raise my toast to celebrate yet another product of the war-stricken days. The one which made us believe.