Like many of us who grew up in the ’70s and ’80s, I also wanted to know more about this man in the black and white photo who brought colours to our lives during the summer holidays. Thid curiosity was akin to dismantling the back of a radio to find out the source of the sound. Those were the days when Chacha Chaudhary, Billoo, Pinki, Raman and Rocket had become a part of our lives. They could be rented for 50 paise per day. Often our appetite was more than the supply so we would end up renting the same title again, but we seldom complained. Computers were not ubiquitous and National Geographic’s cameras hadn’t captured the molten lava of a volcano. But we could imagine a computer’s speed and the ferocity of a volcano because we knew Chacha’s intelligence and Sabu’s anger. Then came the fad of digests, where only the first two stories were new and the rest of the stuff was repeated — but such was the hold of Sabu that we read on. It was like today’s kids never get bored of a Krrish or a RaOne .
His unique signature used to befuddle me but as I grew up I started appreciating his reasoning, his ability to break stereotypes. His ordinary characters did extraordinary things. Chaudhary is considered to be all brawn but the cartoonist gave him a super brain. His Man Friday Sabu is from Jupiter, the planet of learning, but his ignorance is legendary.
So when one finally met Pran Kumar Sharma early this year for what happened to be one of his last interviews to the media, one decided to ask those existential questions. Surprisingly, he didn’t have any clear answers. “I wanted to be different,” he shrugged. Perhaps, too much logic clouds one’s imagination. When will Sabu get married? “Why should he, when Chachi is there to feed him?” It zipped up my curiosity to put things in black and white. At 75, he was addressing the kid I no longer was.
Pran had a degree in Political Science but he steered clear of political cartoons because there were better political cartoonists than him in the 1960s. Shankar, R.K. Laxman and Sudhir Dar were well settled in their art form. At that time there were no Indian characters in comics and Pran saw a window to show his talent.
Newspapers used to carry strips of Phantom , Superman , Dennis the Menace and Blondie . He decided to make an Indian character with local subjects, something Indian readers could relate to. He used to get Rs.7 to 10 for each strip.
But few know that Pran did dabble in caricatures of politicians as a hobby. In fact, in his office, full of his characters, a caricature of Pandit Nehru with a pigeon perched atop his shoulder stood out. “Nehruji asked me, ‘Why did you make a pigeon on my shoulder,’ and I said that I see you as a statesman,” recalled Pran with pride.
If Laxman made the common man comment on politics, Pran picked a common man to take on evil in various forms. All his characters were taken from the middle class. “I didn’t base him on any one particular person. You could find a Chacha Chaudhary roaming in Chandni Chowk or Dariba Kalan area,” he said.
With bushy moustache and a rickety stick Chaudhary is not muscular like western superheroes. Even his dog Rocket is a street mongrel. I pointed out that nobody knows Chacha’s name. “There is no need. The two words rhyme well together,” he said. He even created his twin brother Chajju Chaudhary, which many have forgotten about. He had lapsed from the cartoonist’s memory as well till he became a Rs.20 lakh question in Kaun Banega Crorepati .
Interestingly, there was no Sabu for the first few years. When he started the problems of India were ordinary but gradually we started facing threats of terrorism, bomb blasts and hijackings. Pran thought that if he didn’t keep pace with time he would be left behind, for Chacha was too small to take on these obstacles. “It will no longer look natural. Then I introduced a muscular man and weaved a story around him. But I kept them grounded,” he said.
For many years Sabu wore very little and Pran said it was in tune with the times when wrestlers were often seen in a langot (loin cloth). However, when he got a few complaints and considered that the comics were meant for family reading, he changed his attire to tight jeans.
Economic liberalisation had an effect on his characters as well. The middle class of the ’90s was different from the middle class of the ’70s. He had to bring in a vehicle at Chacha Chaudhary’s house but with Sabu you can’t have an ordinary car. “I didn’t want anything flashy. So I created a situation where Chacha got a truck of Second World War vintage,” he said.
Before Chacha, there was Shrimatiji, whom Pran created way back in 1968 for Sarita magazine. It was created around husband-wife jokes, issues of homework and limited salary. “I always wanted to make people laugh and when the reader opened the mouth to laugh I pushed in the message.” When his strips were compiled into books courtesy Diamond Comics, they gave Amar Chitra Katha’s mythical tales hard times. Parents wanted kids to know their past but they wanted to go with the man who was commenting on their present. The demand took a downturn in the ’90s when animation came into our homes through television, and purchases the demand of printed comics waned. Then Sahara group offered to adapt Chacha Chaudhary into a television series. When the series appeared on television, sales of the printed version swelled again. However, the quality of the series was not upto the mark and Chacha had to return to the print format. Pran had signed a deal with a company to turn Chacha into a feature film, but his ill health took its toll. But even at 75 and under medication because of colon cancer, he was sketching without any trembling in the fingers. “I have people who make use of Photoshop to fill colours, but as far as sketching and writing is concerned I want to do it myself.” He signed two for us and finally I could decipher the contours of Pran.
The pioneer
When Jatin Varma, founder of Comic Con, first lost himself in the world of Pran Kumar Sharma’s comics many years ago, little did he know that their paths would cross one day. Pran, whose comics represented for Jatin a fascinating mix of the everyday and the fantastic, emerged as a great supporter of Comic Con, visiting it every year in Delhi since it started in 2011. This year at Comic Con, Pran was given the Lifetime Achievement Award. Summing up his contribution, Jatin says, “Across the world, it is not easy to have an indigenous comics industry. The fact that India does owes a lot to Pran. He essentially started it.”
