Kathmandu, April 6 -- "Doab Dil brings together drawings and text like two converging rivers," claims the book's introductory remark. It informs us, in a poetic, dreamy style, that "The fertile tract of land lying between two confluent rivers is called a doab (Persian do ab, two rivers)."

This promising preface is backed by the graphic novel's jacket-a lone woman perched at the edge of a rock stares into the blue-white skies, cup of tea in hand, hills rolling by, fields in bloom, a river winding through. It is enough to evoke strong emotions, of an era gone by, of a memory from a distant hillock that still lingers in the mind.

Turning the page over, we spy a man who carries a house on his shoulders. On the next page, an ordinary office-...