Chacha Chaudhary
The sentence, ’Chacha Chaudhary’s brain works faster than a computer’, used to appear at least once in every issue of Pran’s rendition of the world’s most intelligent man. During the course of his adventures, good old Chachaji won medals at the asiads and the Olympic games, outwitted aliens bent on Earth invasion, stopped international disasters, and somehow always managed to find time for small-time crooks like Dhamaka Singh. The red turban on his head(said to be the secret behind his intelligence), the stick in his hand, and the sheer’indianness’ about him were probably what made him dear to all the kids around the country. I was no exception.
And who can forget Sabu, the yin to Chachaji’s yang, the brawn required to complement Chachaji’s brain. A native of jupiter, one thing Sabu loves most, apart from kicking Dhamaka Singh into space like a soccer ball, is to drink kheer made by Chachaji’s wife(known just as Chachi) while asking Chachaji some dumb questions. Then there is rocket, Chachaji’s vegetarian dog. How many times has Dhamaka Singh tried to lure rocket away with a piece of meat so that he can burgle the house? Tsk Tsk, some people never learn!
Champak
Champak was, I remember, the best value for money. During the time when one Chacha Chaudhary comic costed 8 rupees, Champak costed only 5 rupees and it lasted longer(because it had more stories) so when a long train journey beckoned, it was always Champak that won the race. It was full of no-nonsense stories of all types targeted at children and pre-teens, and I remember some of the stories like I have read them yesterday. There were also special editions like’Holiday special’, ’Summer special’, ’Humour special’ etc with some more fun-packed pages added for an extra rupee or so.
I have to say it was Champak that molded my thoughts and opinions as a child. The reason for this is that though Chacha Chaudhary was good, it was so tongue-in-cheek that even as a child, it was more a source of fun than anything else. But Champak was different. Most of its stories were about school children and they tackled a variety of themes like peer pressure, honesty, generosity, friendship.you name it. I will probably find them corny if I read them now, but they made a very deep impression on my thought processes as a child and really laid the foundations for what I would become(or should I say what I HAVE become?) as an adult.
Tinkle
This one will probably win it hands down in terms of how much it hurts your pocket, especially when pocket money is hard to come by. A tinkle digest probably had half the number of stories you can find in a Champak, but it was five times more expensive. Why? It was glossier, more colourful and full of pictures on the front cover. Of course, when you are twelve, you hardly ever stop to think about all this. All you want to do is to go for the more visually appealing book, and I often did.
Having said that, there are a few good things to be said about Tinkles and Tinkle digests(the digest being a monthly rehash of the weekly Tinkles). It did a great job of bringing folk-tales, fairy-tales and funny tales of all languages and countries with some nice illustrations, and it thus supplied something that no other comic book at that time did. In addition to that, it ran regular features like Kalia, Tantri, Shikhari Shambu, Kapish etc which have become household words in kid’s conversations in India. Sadly, over the years, there has been a noticeable increase in the cost of the magazine coupled by a noticeable decrease in the number and size of its pages.
Amar Chitra Katha
While Tinkle was busy capturing the folk-tale and fairy-tale market, Amar Chitra Katha took it upon itself to educate children on Indian mythology. The illustrations are probably of the highest quality you can expect in a comic book of Indian origin, and the stories are accurate and very lucidly told. My entire knowledge of Indian mythology, I am proud to say, has come from reading titles like’The Sons of Rama’, ’Ravana’, ’Kunti’, ’Drona’, ’Sishupala’ and the like. The influence is so extreme that even today when I listen to someone mention Dronacharya, the first picture that comes to my mind is the illustration I had seen all those years ago in an Amar Chitra Katha comic.
On a completely unrelated note, I discovered a shop here that stocks Amar Chitra Katha for rent and for an annual fee of 30 dollars, the shopkeeper said I could take out as many books as I want. I have already, in the space of two days, gobbled up four half-yearly editions and tomorrow I am going back for more. Exciting times for me!
Grimm’s fairy tales
While all the above four titles appealed to some part of me as a child, there was one common thing shared by all of them: they all dealt with real, tangible concepts. So when my mother gave me a big, fat book of’fairy tales’, there was something in it that appealed to me straight away because none of these stories seemed to be restrained by the chains of reality. And when you are a kid of twelve dreaming of ruling the world one day, you think that is cool. Very, very cool.
Some of the stories that will stay with me forever are’Snow White’, ’Beauty and the beast’, ’Rumpelstilzkin’, ’Hansel and Gretel’ and’Jack and the Beanstalk’. Please notice that this list is not at all exhaustive; how can any list of Grimm’s fairy tales be exhaustive? In passing, I should also mention the incredible quality of Disney’s animated movies on’Snow White’ and’Beauty and the Beast’. It is almost criminal not to have seen them. They are sheer magic.
The reading habit
One of my earliest memories is of listening to one of the many stories my mother told me every night at dinner. Stories of Moulvi Naseeruddin, stories from The Mahabharata, stories from the Panchatantra, stories from anywhere, everywhere. That created in me a hunger for stories that will probably never die. Maybe that hunger was what drove me from library to bookshop to railway station to library when I was a kid, looking for stuff to read. Maybe that hunger is what makes me want to read every day, every night, every minute I can spare. Maybe you have felt that hunger sometime too. If you have, we need to take the time to reflect in celebration of that hunger, because without it, our lives would have been a mere shadow of what they turned out to be.
A toast?