This month of March I am celebrating a few M's ! One of the M's is M for Museums! Celebrating museums it is ! So, there is an amazing exhibit in the Asian art Museum about Maharajas of India. In it, is a floor of Sanjay Patel's artwork. Sanjay Patel is an animator for Pixar and has created great art telling stories about hinduism with an animated twist to it. None of his animation techniques are new, or his own, but, what is original is that he has applied all these modern day digital tools to transform archaic hindu artifacts to something digitally attractive for todays audience and its something more relatable. No matter how many pictures I post here, his work cannot be exhibited enough. The exhibit by Sanjay Patel starts with a text panel that says the 'Maharaja and Me' which tells Sanjay's story of the transformation of ancient hindu avatars to modern day illustrations. The exhibit is named 'Deities, Demons and Dudes with Staches : Indian Avatars'. See? This sounds a lot more relatable than a title like "Guru Sakshat Prarbramha". Right? So here is my take on Sanjay's art. 
I am in complete awe of his work. His work is so necessary and long overdue. It will be a great influence on all the hindu kids who usually cannot relate to the epics and who don't know what the lessons behind those epics are. It will be a great learning experience for the kids who wonder what their parents are upto when they see their parents chanting out loud to beautiful idols. As a hindu, I know, how hard it is to remember all the stories my grandmother told me about krishna and vishnu and bramha and so many other gods. I loved them all and I loved her storytelling skills. She would add sound effects and make Big actions with her hands and I would be immediately sucked in to her world of Karna dancing from one end to the other and transforming himself into a beautiful woman to fool all the evil Rakshashas. But today, could my memory use some refreshing? Yes, it could, but, grandmother is not around anymore. Yes, we have the internet and some books with long dry stories, that are half as fun as the way my grandmother had passed them on to me.
Growing up, I saw various Tv series about the Mahabharata and the Ramayana. Though, the epics are long, and its hard to remember the gazillion characters and their gazillion powers and their gazillion achievements. I am guessing, I am not the only one in this boat of feeling lost with the many hindu stories and I assume, that the newer generation would know even lesser than I do, because I doubt they choose to watch the old film quality Ramayana over the bright, colorful Green lantern cartoon. When I was younger, Ramayana and Mahabharat were probably one of the only entertainment shows on tv. As an adult, I have always felt very guilty for not knowing enough about Hinduism. Sanjay Patel's work answered all my prayers and all his work is a satiating solution to my deep seated insecurity of being an idiot of a hindu.
Sanjay Patel's work is full of graphic images with very easy to understand script written by himself. His cartoonish illustrations are eye catching and his modern interpretation of the myths are plain humorous. I actually sat in the gift shop and giggled my way through many pages of his illustrations. How do you react when you read something like, "Saraswati is very independent. She will kick your ass."? You would laugh out loud right! He makes it very easy to remember that Saraswati is the goddess that did not care about her terrible marriage with Bramha and instead spent her time playing sitar and that Parvati was actually her sister and that Kayekaye was not a dancer but she was the evil stepmother of Ram. Through his digital avatars of Ram and Sita and many other gods and goddesses , it becomes incredibly easy to learn and recall what each of those gods liked to do , whether they liked to dance or create the world, or whether they traveled on a tiger or on a bird. Stories about the evil kings these gods conquered are much easier to learn from my animated grandmother and even better from Sanjays colorful modern day illustrations. It's hard to learn from old tv series that use some archaic language that no one follows anymore. Sanjay's work solves all these issues, that too, merely through his easy to understand graphic illustrations and simple text.
I heard people would touch Ramanand Sagars feet to show respect for his work and his creation of the TV series of Ramayana. Today, the newer generation has Sanjay Patel to thank ! The image above, is from Sanjay's web site called "ghee happy". Converting epics to pop culture , is a brilliant idea ! Sanjay Patel's work is going to touch billions of people. Many kids will now have Sanjays comic books which will help them make a connection between their ancient roots to their current pop culture tastes. Those kids that like to watch Shinchan on TV and in contrast also like to dance on the streets for Ganesh utsav can now through Sanjays cartoonish books , relate to the far in the past ancient stories of Ganesha. Congratulations and much good luck goes to Sanjay Patel for making all the mysterious epics not so mysterious anymore. Sanjay deserves every ounce of respect I have for him.
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