Through A ‘Comic' Lens

Mounica Tata takes her audience through a rollercoaster of emotions with her illustrations and comics. She tells Nikshubha Garg why they are ideal to put forth a point

- Nikshubha Garg

One of Mounica Tata’s comics showcases a family portrait with each member rambling away before a picture is to be captured. Another, talks about the horrors of spraying deodorant on the armpits right after shaving them. Go through a few more, and you’ll find one which appropriately brings out the pleasure of paani puri. Scroll further, and there are umpteen capturing nostalgia.

The 30-year-old, who goes by the Instagram handle @doodleodrama, is one of the most popular Indian illustrators on social media. She kick-started DoodleoDrama in 2013 on Facebook as a means to share comics with friends and family, and today, the page has over 84k followers on the platform, and 66.8k on Instagram. Tata, armed with a postgraduate degree in mass communication from Christ College, Bengaluru, leaned towards art since childhood, and enjoyed keeping herself engaged in the process. However, drawing took centre-stage during her master’s degree. “I made silly caricatures of friends and teachers, and also included comics about college life. That love of telling stories through comics continued.” Ask her what makes her illustrations popular, and she says, “Their honesty.” Having worked as an editor, copywriter, and client executive (in that order), she quit in 2016 to take up illustrating full-time.