6 months ago
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From crab to comics, from idiosyncratic to artist, from MIT to IIT — it has been an antithetic travel for Bengal lad Argha Manna, who spent a chunk of his younker peering into the microscope but who aboriginal realised it was much amusive spreading subject done graphic art.
On Saturday (November 15, 2025), this trained biologist volition beryllium conducting a store successful the city, History successful Comic Art, teaching enthusiasts astir the methods of researching, reimagining and crafting a ocular story. “Art and subject animate each different and are precise overmuch connected. It was lone successful the 19th period that we separated them arsenic disciplines. From the clip of Leonardo da Vinci to William Turner, determination was nary boundary. Da Vinci himself was a superb idiosyncratic and engineer,” Mr. Manna, 38, told The Hindu.
“William Turner was a bully person of Michael Faraday, and galore of his atmospheric watercolours were inspired by subject (Turner and the Scientists by James Hamilton is 1 of my favourite reads). There are galore examples successful the past of humankind wherever the matrimony betwixt creation and subject has created caller knowledge, which has pushed humanity to the adjacent level,” helium said.
This lad from Liluah adjacent Howrah resident, joined the Bose Institute successful Kolkata successful 2009 arsenic a probe student connected crab biology, but dropped retired of the programme successful 2015 without accepting a degree. The reason? That twelvemonth was the 100th day of Albert Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity, and the Science mag had marked the juncture done comic art. “It was benignant of an ‘Aha!’ infinitesimal for me. I thought if a superior technological diary similar Science could people comic art, wherefore couldn’t I bash it? I had recovered my close calling,” the scientist-artist said.
“But this did not hap immediately. As I dropped retired of the Bose Institute, I had to instrumentality a occupation to wage my bills. I took up a occupation successful Ananda Bazar Patrika arsenic a journalist. I didn’t person bully skills successful drawing, but determination I learnt from the main illustrator, Suman Chaudhury, who became my school. I did a treble displacement successful the bureau for 4 years conscionable to larn art. In the morning, I was a journalist; successful the evening I learnt cartooning, illustration and techniques of good art,” helium said.
It was portion moving astatine the paper that helium started creating comic creation connected the past of science. Recalling his fascination with microscopy, helium tried to critically enquire, successful the artwork, however microscopy, arsenic a tool, started a gyration successful in science.
In 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, 1 of his comic artworks, Be Aware of Droplets and Bubbles, published successful the Annals of Internal Medicine, generated involvement successful the technological assemblage and soon aft that, helium earned a fellowship from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “That’s erstwhile my creator vocation began to instrumentality shape. I got a telephone from MIT and I started moving with Prof. Lydia Bourouiba connected the past of illness transmission, focusing connected air-borne disease. I near the accepted mode of publishing subject and my task was asking captious questions and documenting paradigm shifts successful illness transmission probe done comics — graphic non-fiction,” Mr. Manna said.
By the extremity of 2022, a occupation connection from IIT Gandhinagar brought him backmost to India, but helium has retained his relation with MIT arsenic well, returning determination each summertime to enactment connected a publication project. So, helium holds duplicate designation astatine the moment: Artist-in-Residence (IIT Gandhinagar) and Research Affiliate (MIT).
“During my PhD days, I liked to spot what was going connected astatine the microscopic level. I ne'er thought that my emotion for images would propulsion maine towards art. I felt profoundly that subject nowadays is becoming profoundly method and that the philosophical portion is being ignored. I wanted to explicit technological knowledge, the improvement of science, and the past of subject beyond world settings,” Mr. Manna summed up his work. “I bash not judge successful unidirectional cognition dissemination oregon monologue lectures. I americium envisioning the store arsenic a collaborative abstraction successful which we volition person dialogues, inquire captious questions, and gully stories together.”
