Those were the days! I owe all my knowledge about Indian mythology, legends, epics, histories, folktales, fables, etc., mainly to my monthly subscription of 'Amar Chitra Katha' comics as a child. I picked up this habit from my grandfather.......though a children's magazine, it appealed to adult readers too. My grandfather and I would subscribe to two different schemes of the Katha so that we could swap them and end up with actually two different comics in a month!
My grandfather usually subscribed to 'Chandamama', a collection of Indian short stories, folktales and fables put together in a graphic digest form. While I subscribed to the lofty Indian epic sagas like the 'Mahabharata' in parts, or mythologies like 'Dasavatara'. You might find this a little odd.....a grandfather reading short stories and a grand-daughter reading the mega omnibuses! But, you have got to remember, I was a young impressionable child then who was undergoing her tutorials in Indian culture and heritage under the guise of these comics!!
This is what I have been driving at - the very fact that Amar Chitra Katha was a perfect blend of entertainment and education for young minds. As the name suggests, Amar Chitra Katha literally means "Eternal Pictorial tales". It had stories and sagas ranging from Ramayana to Panchatantra, Jataka Kathas, Akbar-Birbal stories, stories with morals, etc.
Unique to India, these comics illustrate historical and mythological tales from India's rich cultural heritage, and are readily available across Indian bookstores and railway station kiosks, and are quite inexpensive. I used to collect my extra supplements of the comics at the railway stations during our annual holiday trips. I was also member of a library where kids swapped their comics on a weekly basis..........and any tampering with comics was fined by confiscating the incumbents comics!
Amar Chitra Katha was the premier comics brand in India, much before the Marvel, Raj and Diamond Comics of this world took over. Children nowadays are more familiar with Nagraj, Dhruv and Chacha Chaudhary, or are not into reading comics et all with the other multimedia, animation media available. Somehow Amar Chitra Katha missed the bus and couldn't captivate the interests of present generation Indian children, or if seen from a different perspective, maybe the kids today have missed the bus....the loss is surely theirs.
1 comment:
could not agree more. though i read amar chitra katha on and off and am an ardent follower of druv, nagraj, banke lal, thrill horror suspense series and lately doga and all, but i do agree that ACK has an antiquity and old world charm not possessed by late arrivals.
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