Striking the right chord

Written and illustrated by Basu, The Piano also explores contexts of war and the Indian freedom struggle

As an adult, you don't always expect a book meant for children to move you to (happy) tears. The Piano (Duckbill), a graphic novel that was released this month, goes against this expectation. It's heart-warming and ruminative, and you wonder if it was meant only for children. But writer-illustrator Nandita Basu's answer is reassuring. She says, "I believe that stories are for everyone. When I was working on this title, I wasn't writing for an age group. I also didn't want this to be a loneliness saga or an intricate thought."

The story revolves around a little girl named Meera, who longs for a friend and finds one in her piano. Multiple contexts are neatly woven through it, including both World Wars, colonialism, India's freedom struggle and the global economic meltdown of 1997. Basu began working on the idea over a year ago and completed the novel in two and a half months. The crux of the story is rooted in her personal experience. Having played the piano since she was 12, Basu also took to the violin and dabbles with the cello. But it was at 18 when she walked into a real adventure.

In Delhi's Vasant Kunj, she came across a rundown broken piano. The Gurugram resident was drawn to the brown, rickety instrument, and ended up purchasing it at the cost of diluting her savings. She named it Marcus Aurelius after the Roman emperor and philosopher. From the very beginning, Basu treated it like anything but an inanimate object; it was her companion in the quiet and in the chaos.

Marcus was made by the German company Julius Feurich that was instituted in Leipzig in 1851. Basu was interested in knowing its origins and so, emailed the company with the visible embossed number that helps track manufacturing details and reveal the age of the instrument.

What happened next set the ball rolling for the graphic novel. The manufacturer replied saying that the pianoforte was made in 1914 - the year World War I erupted with the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand - and that no other details were available since their workshop had been bombed during World War II (WW2).

Though Marcus is still very much alive in Basu's home, it also occupies a significant space in the novel, traversing different locations - from Leipzig and England to Kolkata and Mumbai. "There was honestly no research at all. The only thing I had to do was to build credibility and ensure that the dates add up. The challenge was to work with the bit on the Indian freedom struggle. I wanted to include a freedom fighter and mentioned Bina Das because nobody knows her like they know Subhas Chandra Bose," she explains.

Nandita Basu

Another noteworthy element in the title is that Basu shows how members of the British Indian Army were part of the war. This idea stemmed from a visit to a cemetery for WW2 soldiers in Belgium. "I was surprised to see so many Indian names. I was wondering if their families even knew they were here," she shares.

In the midst of all this conflict in the book, the thread that binds them all is Meera's piano and the power of music. As Basu says, "We're always looking for a way to complete ourselves. And sometimes, it can be achieved through unexpected things and places."

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