Madhu Ramaswamy is a winsome, engaging and awfully nice scriptwriter and graphic artist based in New Delhi, India. He is not interested in eggplants, but he is interested in pretty much everything else (yoga, cooking, philosophy, science, poetry, the environment, the Vedas, mental health issues, public policy, art, Indian and Western classical music, jazz and blues and some rock and pop and his own future prospects).

His first name is pronounced with a long ‘Aah’ of recognition for the ‘a’ and an appreciative ‘Oooh!’ at the end. Surname – long ‘a’, short ‘a’, long ‘a’. Ends, unfortunately, with an ’Eeeee!’.

He’s worked as a commissioned media person for the last twenty years but has been flapping his wings desperately of late. He thinks God is talented, but she needs to work harder.

What he would really like to do is to create a comic book that reflects Indian sensibilities, albeit the urban ones he’s familiar with for the most part, and is yet accessible and interesting to a wide international viewership. He feels that much of contemporary Indian writing and thinking is either imitative of western idioms or Indian in only a quaint, picturesque, orientalist way. He tends to make sweeping statements when his word count is restricted.

And, Ramaswamy says, “I would appreciate it very much if I were to be allowed to complete my magnum opus before terrorists, epidemics, global warming or cigarettes put a ‘fin’ to the comic strip called life.”

His comic As It Flows appears on The India Water Portal, but you can also see the images on flickr.

- Sarah Morean

Tags: as it flows, india, madhu ramaswamy, new delhi, water