With a single motto in mind, ‘Mental Health for All’, Sachin Gaonkar, a documentary filmmaker went on a journey across the Indian borders on a bicycle to spread awareness about mental health issues in the country. The main reason why he chose to go on this trip was because he’s been with the Institute for Psychological Health (IPH) NGO for the past 15 years and this year the NGO celebrated its 25th Anniversary. So, everyone decided to put in whatever they could to make people aware about mental health and its scope in daily living.
Being a cyclist for the past 2 years, Sachin decided to grab this opportunity to go across urban and rural cities in India, make them acquainted with the various benefits of cycling and how beneficial it is in their daily hectic life. With a daily budget of Rs 700, this incredible self funded journey across the 25 states of our nation by Sachin where he covered 13,000 kms in 223 days, will now be seen in a comic, ‘Antaryatra’ by Crimzon studio.
We got in touch with Sachin Gaonkar to know his thoughts behind choosing a comic format to pen his adventures on this Bharat Parikarima and why he chose Crimzon Studio for it.
“I have been working with kids and during the trip I interacted with many of them as well. I noticed that they are full of energy but they don’t know how to channelise it. Many kids travel to school by cycles and for them cycle is just a mode to go back and forth from their home to school,” said Sachin. Believing that cycling is far beyond just a mode of transport, he expressed, “I want to enlighten them about the fact that there’s more to cycling than just that, which is why I chose to document my journey in a comic format as it’s a fun and easy method for kids to read and understand.”
The comic book documents his journey where he mentions the various encounters with people and what experiences he gathered from this trip. Upon asking what are his thoughts on Crimzon Studio, he mentions, “My wife knew Amit and Tina Ghadge as they were her students once upon a time. I saw their artwork and loved it. While coming up with this comic, I got to learn a lot about the various processes involved in getting a comic right.”
“Being a theatre and film scriptwriter, it was challenging for me to write the story for the comic as one has to be very concise in it. Amit has helped a lot in this process and we have made this comic come to life within 2 months,” he beamingly says.
Crimzon Studio’s founder and CEO, Amit Ghadge, states, “Coming up with this kind of comic has been amazing as it showcases that comic is a form of art and can be used as a medium to spread message. It also helps one realise that comic is not just a hobby but can be pursued as a career as well.”
Antaryatra is a 28 pages, pocket sized comic that has been co-produced by Crimzon Studio and Artivities. The comic has been written by Sachin Gaonkar, pencilled and inked by Pankaj Tulaskar, flattened by Tina Ghadge and coloured and lettered by Amit Ghadge. The issue is available in two languages: English and Marathi. Dr. Shubhangi Batar has proofread and translated the issue to Marathi and 1000 copies in each language have been printed.
The comic was inaugrated at Pashtepada Digital School near Shahpur where feedback of kids was taken into account and accordingly few changes were made and the final comic was created.
Antaryatra is going to be launched tomorrow at VEDH event since the target audience is teenagers. Also, many young minds will be seen as varied career perspectives will be introduced over there.
