What is it about the Hindu deities that works as a cartoon?
It’s funny because, actually, I think there is a big kitsch factor to this book. You know, making them look like cartoons, that’s just sort of absurd in one sense. In another sense, I suppose it works because these gods have been depicted for thousands of years by different artists, and I’m carrying on that tradition. I’m an artist and this is how I see it. That’s how I sort of come to terms with it. I also think that the reason that the Hindu gods really lend themselves to caricature is because the mythology itself is really abstract. You have characters with elephant heads, characters that are bird and human at the same time, characters that have decapitated heads — things that just wouldn’t work well in photography or some highly rendered imagery, You worked on “The Simpsons” for a while. How did you feel about Abu, the Kwik-E-Mart owner who was Hindu? I remember some Indian Americans were upset about his portrayal. I love “The Simpsons” dearly. I still watch it every day, and ther
