Yin Sharma (Indian Express) – “I really want to go, I love Delhi.”

“I don’t think Delhi is in love with me,” he told NDTV. “I want to come. I want to do something important.”

And speaking of importance, I have also found my first “superhero” on my own doorstep.

“One and One’s Day” is a bi-weekly comic strip by me, in which I make my best friend from childhood, who likes to play superhero, a new hero to challenge the other superheros.

In December 2011, my friend had told me about the comic I drew on a scrap of paper at his home in Delhi, and asked if I could sell the paper or give it to him, so that he could keep it, and then, later, for a bigger drawing project.

I said yes, knowing my friend wouldn’t want me to do anything with it, so I promised him that he would get his own version of the comic strip (if he’d like, of course) but I would let him keep the original, so he was in no doubt that his friend would get it. And indeed, for months, while watching “One and One’s Day”, I never saw my friend’s name anywhere in it.

He asked to see it every once in a while, only to find out that his friend hadn’t read it until I told him about it. He got really upset.

“You have been such a good friend, you’ve let me think and see beyond just how big and how cool I am,” my friend told me that day, before stopping talking to me for a while. “I am proud to know I have been the person who taught this to him.”

After he told me the story of his friend discovering his secret identity in the original comic, I think he felt my friend was giving us a role model for doing the same thing.

But this month, my friend has changed a couple of aspects of “One and One’s Day”. He has told me that I should ask him to edit it, I should start with more detail. And his friend can take a more active role and show more of the comic strip. I think our role models are growing all the time…

For more about the comic, read this article: “One and One’s Day” by Sankrant Kulkarn