Aibai

WRITTEN AND ILLUSTRATED BY DEBASMITA DAS

A PROJECT OF SRISHTI SCHOOL OF ART, DESIGN AND TECHNOLOGY

To all my domestic workers I never knew.

Of the many unknown workers that exist in our world, the domestic worker is probably the one we have always been closest too. They come into our homes as strangers and become an intrinsic part of our daily life as they become our friends and family. However class reveals itself even in these close relationships as we tend to see them ultimately as our servants and ignore their own stories.

This graphic novel explores the class boundaries that exist in our treatment of domestic workers through the eyes of Shyam, the son of a ‘bai’ who notices and questions these distinctions we make in our everyday life and in the process reveals the issues faced by domestic workers today.