From naan to churro, inspiration from an art museum in India.
By Deepak Chitnis
WASHINGTON, DC: An Indian American eighth-grader has become a published cartoonist, having created a comic strip that ties together the various disparate cultures that she has grown up around with a single common denominator – bread.
Maalvika Bhat, who lives in Cupertino, California, created the strip where each of the characters is a type of bread native to a certain region of the world. The characters are all named for the type of bread they are: there’s a character named Naan, one named Churro, and even a character named Stud Muffin. One of the characters, Buttery Toast, is a stand-in for Bhat herself.
The strip, named Breadsters, can be read on its official website here. It was first published last summer, and has grown quickly in popularity with the students in Bhat’s school district. In an age where youngsters are turning increasingly more often to technology – Facebook, smartphones, video games, and so on – Bhat sees herself and the old-fashioned, hand-drawn comic strip as something of a throwback.
“In today’s day and age, when most kids are into Twitter and talking in 140 characters, or using Vines and YouTube, I feel like I have gone retro,” she said in an interview with the San Jose Mercury News.
Although she doesn’t really read comic strips herself, except for “Garfield” and “Calvin and Hobbes,” Bhat says that her natural comedic abilities help her with the strip. The inspiration came from a trip to India, during which she visited an art museum and got the idea to begin drawing a comic strip. She finds coming up with ideas to be the hardest part, but loves the challenge of writing the strip.
She has several other interests as well. Bhat dabbles in a wide range of hobbies and extra-curricular interests, including travel, music, reading, piano, acrylic painting, Java programming, and traditional Indian dancing.
“Maalvika is a middle-school student who also loves music, dance, painting and movies. She lives in the Bay Area in Northern California with her parents,” says her Breadsters website.
In addition to the Breadsters website, people can stay up-to-date with the comic strip via its Facebook page, found here, which has nearly 300 fans so far.
To contact the author, email to deepakchitnis@americanbazaaronline.com