I remember childhood Saturday afternoons with great happiness; my parents who worked in a bank would be back home by one and we could have lunch together. But that is not why I remember Saturdays; they would bring for me one Amar Chitra Katha comic each week. At one stroke, they had devised a way of keeping me occupied on week-ends and subtly instilling a love for books and reading.
I spent countless happy days immersed in AKCs; stories of gods and demons, brave freedom fighters, poets and dreamers, valiant kings and queens (when I visited Jhansi on work, and my tourist guide took me around the fort, I had vivid memories of the story I had read many years ago; a sense of comic deja vu, if you will), foolish and loyal commoners, sly animals and stupid ones, extremely irritating goody-goody young boys and girls, questions and answers on science thrown in carefully…
And the characters on Tinkle I have stayed in love with to this day: clever Kalia, foolish but lovable doob doob, Shikari Shambu and his hunter hat, stupid Supandi, the forever plotting Tantri the Mantri…
Innocent days when I was actually quite happy to be sermonised to, Panchatantra and Jataka tales with their now-unpalatable morals. Animals and birds that could think and talk, the baddies who never won and the goodies who were always rewarded, wise men who could perform miracles, thieves who had sudden change of hearts… As I said, they were more innocent days…
I don’t ever remember buying one of those comics on my own. My “collection” was built over years through these Saturday afternoon gifts. Or borrowed, as recently, when I found a AKC on Kalpana Chawla.
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It is very interesting to see the way Amar Chitra Katha has kept in touch with the changing role models for kids of this generation; no longer kings from the distant past or even freedom ighters from the recent past but real people with real achievements (I also noticed on their list JRD the quiet conquerer). I wonder what other titles they will come up with in future…
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Elsewhere : check out god’s own greens and blues on Itchy Feet and The seven Cs and research methods on Mindspace.
Ah, but you bring back memories…For me, it was Indrajal Comics…the Phantom, Flash Gordon, Mandrake, Bahadur…the Phantom more than anybody else…I read a lot of AKC too, but it was mostly Indrajal comics…
Ah ha…so the Monk is a fan of Bahadur and Bela:-))) That makes two of us. Thanks Charu for this wonderful post. I had a huge collection of comics that got slowly and steadily burgled by friends and cousins. Now all I have are memories.
Hi Charu
We bought several of these ACK comics for my son to read. He likes reading them as well – especially the Jataka stories.
It was so cute hearing him tell his Pati the story of the monkey and the crocodile as if she had never heard this story before.
hi charu, this is off-topic ..but i’m glad that aruna has found a job..i don’t know if you remember that i had asked you whether she would be interested in teaching..? well anyway, i’m happy for her, and also glad that she has well-wishers like you. and.. happy new year !
Charu,
You wrote: valiant kings and queens (when I visited Jhansi on work, and my tourist guide took me around the fort, I had vivid memories of the story I had read many years ago; a sense of comic deja vu, if you will)
Okay, here’s a quiz for the weekend. What was Rani Lakshmibai’s childhood name? IIRC, it appeared on the cover (inside – facing page 1) of ACK, where they write a brief synopsis and give the credits. Cross your heart and state that you will not search the web for the answer:-)
Btw, I hear you about ACK. My favorite books of them all.
hah..looks like i for one had a weird liking for power comics umlike u guys….i liked NAGRAJ(yes,the charismatic snake god capable of producing snakes from all his body parts…now i wonder how that freak used to do it and why i idiolozed him so much). and yes there was ever popular hero Phantom whose wardrbe used to envy me as i cudnt practically even try to replicate it in real life(wearing underpants on ur pants is a tough task,believe me:-) though now it seems to be a wardrobe malfunction and nothing else:-)
i wish i had layed my hands upon ACK back then, i wud i hv been a more wiser person.
nostalgic article…keep up
cheers
Am surprised no one mentioned Chacha Chaudhari and Sabu in their “must-read” editions – with all the super powered boomerangs, the formulae numbers which always kept on changing, and the stars”*” with the ideas posted. Do you remember what the star indicated in the footnote?…
“Chacha chaudhari ka dimaag computer se bhee tez chalta hai..” ..:-D
Anyway, this is quality article..Amar Chitra Katha comics always had some ‘relevant material’ in their stories. Always had some nice stories to talk about with my granny after I read something.
Can’t say that for Sabu or Nagraj 🙂
Nice post Charu!
ok, ok, so I expected this post to be a nostaliga trip for many… Bahadur and Bela and what’s their dog’s name? the ghost who walks and the old jungle sayings…. and Mandrake the magician? 🙂
Monk, me to, me too, but AKC was something else…
cram, I gave away most of my huge collection in a fit of I dont know what sometime during my terrible adoloscence – kick myself all the time for it… maybe I thought then that they were too kiddy and not for me who was all eager to be grown up.. sigh…
Michael, that is just what AKC did for most of us – acted as substitute grandparents and story tellers 🙂
kuffir, have emailed you…
Quiizzer, Manikarnika was her name, or Manu (by the way, is this how you get your lazy day kicks – by playing “gotcha” – asking this coz of the way you have stresssed on the “vivid” word in my post – if your memory is that vivid, come on, tell me this :)))
dipz, nagraj? have never heard of this one.. bu it sounds really weird. and something a kid would really enjoy:)
Puru, somehow Chacha C has always been associated in my mind with the Hindi speaking region – unlike the other comics… mybe the word chacha itself – I never cared for it much myself… “chacha c ka dimmag blah blah” *grin*
I remember Shikari Shambu, Suppandi, Uncle Anu (I always wondered about the name!). Awesome! The shop from where I used to buy TINKLE in my early teens, now sells MAXIM and Cosmopolitan. Gone are the days! :'(
I can so relate to this… Amar Chitra Katha are one of the earliest books I started collecting. Unfortunately, over the years I lost most of them.
By the way, just wanted to update you on the change of URL of my blog.
divya, aunty anu? was he the one who dispensed gyan to kids? can’t remember… I haven’t bought tinkle for a long while now, but I had picked up some AKCs for a nephew a few years ago and sneaked in a few Tinkle digests for myself then 🙂
Emma, ya me too. I gave away or lost most of mine over the years. maybe I should start building the collection all over again now? 🙂
Charu,
LOL. 🙂