When I first encountered the work of animation artist Sanjay Patel in California I was blown away.
Here were the Indian epics I’d grown up with, the Indian gods and goddesses coming to life in American pop culture, big eyes and all. Monkeys with their tails on fire, blue skinned gods and golden goddesses.
This is Sandip Roy in Kolkata
Patel had what many would consider a dream job. He worked as an animation artist for Pixar. Working on films like Ratatouille and Toy Story. But at night he was turning the stories from Indian mythology into art.
SP1: I kind of had to realize that I had to I had to make a choice between my day job, which was increasingly something that just wasn't a source of passive passion, which was working on these Pixar movies or my night job, which was, you know, retelling these myths and these stories from India, which I was very excited about.
Pixar even encouraged him to make his own short, rooted in his own personal story.
SP2: I told the bosses at Pixar that I'm leaving, that I'm going to quit to go do my art. They're like, hey, don't quit. You can do your art here. I'm like, no, no, no, no, no, no. Pixar doesn't make brown things
But they did. For Sanjay.
SP3: This guy Jim Morris, he was the president of Pixar. He still is. He's like, listen, I will let you develop anything you want for six months. If we don't like it, you can take it back. You could quit.
And that’s how he made Sanjay’s Super Team about a boy who likes his superheroes on TV while his father rings a bell and worships Hindu gods and goddesss. That was in fact his own story. Growing up in motel off Route 66 in California. Bored with his father’s gods and goddesses in the puja or worship room
SP4: The truth was that me and my dad, my dad wanted me to do a pooja and I didn't want to do it. I was ignoring his shrine with all of his gods.
Sanjay’s Super Team was released by Pixar. The short won him an Oscar nomination
SP5: I didn't win, but I was very torn about how to thank all the people that helped make the short film, as well as take the spotlight off of them and put the spotlight on an immigrant father and an immigrant mom.
After the short, the next step might have been his own Pixar feature.
SP6: I think the studio even offered like, hey, would you want to develop a bigger project? And I think I said no.
That might sound really surprising but Sanjay says he was nervous.
SP7: I was in a business, a very successful business called Pixar, that I was the first South Asian that got to make something there. You know, it just I think it was very scary to be the first. And I felt safer doing it at home alone.
And his body was feeling the strain
SP8: I actually had to take a year off from work, and I had a corneal transplant in my left eye, and, um, and I had a year of where I couldn't work and I couldn't draw.
So after 20 years of Pixar Sanjay Patel was ready for a new adventure. This time he wanted to created a series of animation episodes that targeted pre-schoolers. That told stories to his kids about gods like Kartikeya and Ganesha
SP9: And they'll say like, oh, dad, why is he look angry? Well, Karthik and Ganesh are having a fight here and so there's an opportunity to talk about the stories.
And his new channel on Youtube GheeHappyStudio tells the stories of Gods and Goddesses but reimagined as little children
GHEE HAPPY CLIP
And Sanjay Patel is making peace with the religion he once avoided
SP10:A sort of my feeling was throughout my life as a kind of a lefty, liberal artist, like religion really felt like a source of tension and conflict and a lot of just, just very highly problematic.
But now he has discovered you can also have fun, you can also be playful and most importantly you can make up your own rituals
SP11: I think if there's any ritual in our house, it is storytelling.
And its mantra is don’t worry, ghee happy.
This is Sandip Roy in Kolkata for KALW