One does not see them around too much nowadays but there was a time when every child and teenager had a big collection of comic books of which he or she was extremely proud and possessive about.
I guess comics were to us what the awful sounding cartoon films on TV are for today’s kids. We were stuck to them as they are to these cartoons. When I think about my school vacations, comics have a pride of place in them. One could not have a vacation without a substantial number of new comic books along with Enid Blyton books. There was a small circulating library near our home (called KT circulating library) which was set up by a kind uncle in his porch and front verandah. He seemed no less awesome than Santa Claus to us. My elder brother and I headed for this small “Mecca” of ours on bicycles every evening around 6 pm to explore the fascinating world of comics. I can clearly remember the rates at which he rented out the comics to us. A thin comic was for 50 paisa per day while a slightly thicker one would cost us 75 paise per day. Each of us would take one comic and as soon as we reached home, we would begin reading it sometimes delaying our homework in the process. The next afternoon, after coming back from school, we would exchange our comics and read them. And the evening saw us back at KT!
While one read a comic, the real world around us was forgotten. We were in Riverdale High School with Archie and his buddies or with Richie Rich and his fantastic valet Cadbury. little lotta and little Dot seemed like our close friends and Casper, the friendly ghost, always made us smile. Not for a moment did they appear as caricatures or cartoons to us. We took them very seriously and actually thought they existed somewhere! The language of these comics was good and also helped us learn new words and expressions. They were not like the cartoons our children see on TV which are sometimes dubbed in atrocious Hindi.
At my grandfather’s house in Delhi where all of us cousins met during the long summer holidays, the battle for comics was fierce. One of my cousins who was the youngest had an obsession with Tintin comics which were among the most expensive. All of us wished to be in his good books so that we could learn more about Tintin and Snowy. But getting a Tintin comic from him was like taking away a bowl of cream from a cat! When I meet him now, we talk of those days and laugh. He is now a civil services officer but is still as possessive of his Tintins as he was then. I was very fond of Harvey comics, which included Richie Rich, little Dot, little lotta, Spooky, Wendy and some others. I had a good collection of these and exchanged them for Phantom comics with my cousins. lotpot, Chandamama, Nandan, Parag and Champak were Hindi comic-cum-story books for children those days and these were bought for us by our parents on a regular basis. They were great fun too, especially lotpot which was hilarious.
Amar Chitra Katha series, which has been restarted now, gave us our first detailed knowledge of history and mythology. They followed a wonderful way of teaching these in a very interesting way, full of fun. Much before I read classic novels like The Woman in White, A Tale of Two Cities, The Three Musketeers and The House of the Seven Gables, I had already read these in comic book form under the “Classic” series which my father had collected and got them bound together in a brown and gold binding. We still have his collection with us and any member of the family, sometime or the other, picks up some volume and loses oneself in the good old world of classic stories and goes back to the times when my father used to be choosing and arranging the comics to be bound. I have not seen any comics in shops or anyone’s home for a long time now. I look upon them as great stress busters as they take us into a world where things hardly ever go wrong. It is a world full of laughter and ease. And just at an arm’s length away.