HYDERABAD: Hyderabad is soon going to have its own superhero: Ninja Bee. Niloufer, a hijab-adorning girl from the city faces a dual identity crisis when she discovers she has the healing power of bees and flowers, as well as the warrior qualities of a ninja. The creator, Mehdi Saajid, is a design expert who focuses on creating inclusive, Deccan-centric art
A design professor at Woxsen university, Hyderabad, Mehdi Saajid started working on this project two years ago. He gathered a team of hard-working, passionate designers, 30 in all and began creating the Ninja Bee universe. To be released as a graphic novel from his own production: Studio 8bit Rabbit, Ninja Bee’s story aims at bringing a greater representation of Muslims and women in children’s literature and the world of entertainment.
Deeply embedded in Deccani culture, Ninja Bee is a character that has stemmed out of the need to diversify children’s literature and spread the idea of equality and acceptance. “Spiderman has the power of a spider, right? Ninja Bee has the power of bees. This was quite a personal project which came from social issues centred around hijab. In Karnataka, hijab was banned and in Iran, women were protesting against it. Two different scenarios where a lot of control and policing happened but no one asked what women wanted. Also, the idea is for people to look up to Deccani culture. The Telugu film industry is huge but Deccani has very few examples. There are inspirational figures like Baahubali but I wanted something similar for Deccani. There are films like The Angrez and but there is nothing that actually helps uplift people,” said Mehdi Saajid while talking about the rationale behind the novel.
Niloufer is a student who studies Unani medicine at Government Nizamiya Tibbi College near Char Minar. The character of bees goes well with the idea of Unani medicine which is also associated with medicinal flowers and herbs. Using the healing, nourishing and community-building characteristics of bees as a metaphor to shape Niloufer’s character, Mehdi says he made sure the character was well-researched and did not present his own ideation of a woman. “We had women from different perspectives in our group, for example, Wahabi, feminist, traditionalist, etc. The aim was to collaborate and have a common grounding of ideas. We don’t want to offend anyone. We just wanted to make a comprehensive, good story around it,” he said.
Ninja Bee is a fusion of cultural and animalistic characteristics with a sense of purpose: to fight for her own upliftment, as well as for others. The city of Hyderabad also has its own characteristics. “We are using Hyderabad as its own character: all the heritage, culture, food, and everything is part of it,” says Mehdi. “The wordplay around the character is also important. Ninja-Bee, which rhymes with hijabi, has the dual characteristic of being covered, as in for modesty and also being an under-cover Ninja. It is also in line with superheroes having a dual persona, when they are in public, they are in their suits, fully covered but at home, they are different. ‘Bee’ highlights the power of bees and ‘Bi’ is also used to show respect to women in Muslim culture,” Saajid said.
Talking about the challenges faced while executing this ambitious project, he said the biggest one was to find good talent in Hyderabad. “I ran a competition initially where we had hundreds of entries. We found the best illustrators to draw Ninja Bee and then hired them as part of my team. They started illustrating a few things, but it’s really hard to get the idea right, to get that talent in India is difficult. Now there is AI and all, but everything needs to be built from scratch. I’m placing cultural elements in the story which need to be historically and artistically accurate. For like, I am using a dastarkhan which has good intricate motifs. All the postcards that are banned now because of this haram thing need to be made again. Bringing that kind of art again is difficult and one needs a very good archival library of Deccan-centric art,” the illustrator added.
However, he hopes that the novel would be adapted into a film one day. “You don’t choose projects, projects choose you,” he said. He is planning to launch the Ninja Bee universe on August 17 at Goethe Zentrum. The event will provide an immersive experience based on how bees view flowers and experience light. “It will be like Hyderabad Light Festival,” Mehdi Saajid said. “It is also, a channelisation of my feminine side into a character. I studied in Urdu schools where I was the only boy in the school. I think this character itself is my autobiography as a female, as a superhero. So it’s just my exploration of character in some form of tangible media,” he concluded.