Touching Grass: A Book of Comics by Sanitary Panels
Rachita Taneja, the artist and activist behind Sanitary Panels, has built a devoted following online, but this collection makes clear that her work was never just about going viral. It's sharper than that, and far more necessary. These comics and political cartoons are deceptively spare in their visual style, yet they carry a weight that lingers long after the page is turned. Taneja trains her eye on some of the most pressing fault lines of contemporary life: caste discrimination, Islamophobia, transphobia, the widening gap between rich and poor, and a climate crisis that hums with quiet dread beneath almost everything else. She also tackles something trickier to name, that peculiar modern exhaustion of trying to stay politically conscious while algorithmic feeds work overtime to fray your nerves and scramble your focus. The tension between engagement and burnout sits at the book's core, and Taneja handles it with real honesty rather than easy resolution. What saves the collection from becoming a catalogue of grief is its insistence on solidarity. Community, collective refusal, the stubborn persistence of ordinary people who keep showing up; these are the forces Taneja places her faith in. Touching Grass won't offer you comfort in the soft sense, but it will remind you that the fire burning around us is one we face together.
- Author: Sanitary Panels
- Publisher: Bloomsbury India
- Genre: Literary Fiction
- ISBN: 978-9369523986
- Pages: 174 pages