Nanavu is a wordless comic by Athulya Pillai, published by India Development Review. Set along Kerala’s tidal coast, it documents how tidal flooding has become part of everyday life.
The comic comes out of a larger cultural effort underway in Ernakulam. It draws directly from KaBhuMm, an art-led public engagement project run by EQUINOCT with artists from across the country. KaBhuMm turned residents’ experience of tidal flooding into a community archive and a public conversation. Coastal residents have tracked floodwater patterns for years, using lunar cycles, local calendars, and their own records.
This is real data. Official systems rarely collect it, and adaptation planning rarely starts from it.
The Kerala government has now recognized tidal flooding as a state-specific natural disaster, a result of sustained advocacy by local panchayats. The comic carries the lived, collective experience that came before that recognition and will outlast it.
Backed by the Common Ground Initiative, which treats the commons as shared ways of sensing change and not just shared land, Nanavu demonstrates how community knowledge and art can drive climate adaptation forward.
Read here: LinkedIn