INDIA’s first female superhero, Priya, and her trusted flying tiger Sahas, become witnesses to the Covid-19 pandemic in the latest installment of ‘Priya’s Shakti’.
Priya’s Mask is the newest edition of the comic book series featuring the teenage, female superhero, which is accompanied by an animated short film.
Set against the city of Jodhpur, Priya befriends a young local girl to show her how important frontline workers are, while inspiring hope in her.
Priya, having been previously awarded Gender Equality Champion by UN Women, has long focused on dramatic issues affecting women in India.
The series began with Priya’s Shakti, after the gang rape of a young woman on a bus in New Delhi in 2012. In Priya’s Mirror, she joined forces with a group of acid attack survivors; and in Priya and the Lost Girls, she dealt with sex trafficking.
The books were illustrated and animated by Syd Fini, Hamid Bahrami and Neda Kazemifar.
Priya’s Mask is meant for a younger audience, unlike previous editions.
“Priya is responding to children and how they cope,” says Shubhra Prakash, the writer, adding that children get affected the most by crises of this scale.
“They are left to make sense of a changing world, all of a sudden. That’s when Priya comes in,” she says.
Explaining the pandemic to children is its own challenge.
Shubhra says, “It can get complicated while talking about it to a child. So we tried to counter that by showing Sahas and her family in the forest or the birds coming to the city.”
Giving voices to other beings also helps foster empathy towards them, says the writer.
Ram Devineni, creator of the character, says an effort was made to debunk the stigma associated with Covid-19.
“All this misinformation, especially propagated through social media: things like ‘only people from disadvantaged sections get the virus’, was something we wanted to get at. The fear of the virus is as dangerous as the virus itself,” he adds.
Priya’s Mask (both comic and film) by the medai house, Ratapallax, can be accessed, free of cost, at www.priyashakti.com. - The Vibes, December 20, 2020
