Meet an author who writes very, very short stories books 12 magTHE Mumbai’s scrabble club reveals its secret dna clan 14 ON SUNDAY dMumbai,na August.sunday 23, 2009 body & soul 8 culture station 9 live it up 10 perspective 11 On living with a They capture the The calm of the Window of opportunity transplanted organ other Afghanistan swamp beckons in war on terror 26 TV episodes and Currently, the kids’ One challenge is to 2 animation films entertainment produce the cartoons based on Amar segment is mostly in the signature style Chitra Katha limited to cartoon of Amar Chitra Katha, comics will go on characters from the and not make them air in a few months West and Japan look like Pocahontas IN A BRAND Radhika Raj finds out how the once popular Amar Chitra Katha is getting a new life in the age of animation, where surfing the web and TV channels takes precedence over browsing comics NEW AVATAR COVER STORY www.amarchitrakatha.com and also read e-com- We grew up on a staple ic versions of their favourite tales. ACKpedia, a project in the pipeline, aims to create a free on- diet of Tinkle and stories n the basement of a nondescript building line encyclopedia on the lines of Wikipedia and from Amar Chitra Katha. But in Mahim, artists and animators are pour- Google Knol but “with a sharp focus on every- kids these days have different ing over a sketch. “Hanuman is being very thing Indian and will explore the millions of tastes. Today if you don't exist I stubborn,” declares Ashwin Parulkar, cre- places, people and cultures that make up India”. ative producer at the Amar Chitra Katha on television or the internet, then (ACK) studio. For two months Parulkar and his you don't exist at all. So we plan team have been trying to get the animated form A VACUUM IN KIDS’ ENTERTAINMENT to surround children with different of Hanuman (from the Ramayan) right. “There is Hugely popular in the 1970s with a circulation of a particular scene I remember from the epic,” he over 1 lakh copies, the comics saw a drop in sales forms in which they would like to says. “After Hanuman burns Lanka, a crestfallen with the advent of private TV channels in the consume these stories." Ravana admits ‘Hanuman was a difficult chal- nineties. “We were fighting a losing battle. Our lenge. I underestimated him.’ Well, so did I.” circulation dropped to a mere 11,000 copies and — Samir Patil, But, despite these difficulties, most of the ani- our offices were shut down for a brief period,” re- CEO, Amar Chitra Katha Media mation work has been wrapped up, and ACK Me- members Chandrakant Rane, an illustrator with dia, which recently tied up with Turner Interna- Amar Chitra Katha for the past 32 years. The cir- tional India, will soon be releasing 26 TV episodes culation has improved in the past two years, and Shyam Desai and Rane, who have been work- Tales spanning three generations from the comic on Cartoon Network and Pogo. Patil hopes the TV series will give it a real boost. ing for decades with the company,look visibly ex- Two animation films are also slated for release “Recently when a number of shows based on cited to see their old comic characters begin to next year based on Amar Chitra Katha — Tripu- mythological characters were launched, our com- move and talk on screen. Just like Tintin’s cre- ra: The Three Cities of Maya and Sons of Rama. ic book sales picked up, although we had nothing ator Herge studied architecture and fashion be- to do with those shows,” points out Patil. fore sketching certain scenes in his comic, Desai Amar Chitra Katha also hopes to fill a vacuum and Rane too have had to research history before MYTHS FOR THE NEW GENERATION in children’s entertainment on TV,which is most- adapting it in comic format. “In those days there This venture is the latest attempt to make mytho- ly limited to dubbed American Hannah Mon- was no internet. We used to sit for hours in the logical stories accessible to a generation that tanas and Japanese Narutos. “We have produced Asiatic library to study what the drapery and ar- surfs TV channels and logs on to the web more of- shows based on Indian mythological characters chitecture was like in the 17th and 18th centuries ten than it picks up a book. The producers are in the past and they have been more popular than before sketching characters for stories of Shiva- hoping that the characters and stories in Amar the international ones. With ACK there is an ji. When we did a comic on the Indian freedom Chitra Katha will make the series appealing even added advantage — kids already relate to these struggle, we went back to the independence era to though other programmes based on the same stories. It has archives of over 500 titles and that understand what the British wore, and what myths have been made in the past. gives us the scope to explore a variety of topics,” their body structure was like,” reminisces Rane. Samir Patil, CEO, ACK Media is clear about says Monica Tata vice president and deputy gen- Now again they have had to go back to the his strategy.“We grew up on a staple diet of Tin- eral manager — Entertainment Networks, South drawing board, albeit digitally, as their comics kle and stories from Amar Chitra Katha. But kids Asia, Turner International India. take a new form. “It’s a rebirth,” smiles Rane. these days have different tastes. Today if you The animation is faster, sleeker and more dra- don’t exist on television or the internet, then you matic than the comic. Titles that lend themselves Team ACK (L-R) Shyam Desai, Ashwin Parulkar and Chandrakant Rane don’t exist at all. So we plan to surround children AN ARTISTIC CHALLENGE to such a treatment have been carefully chosen with different forms in which they would like to The main challenge lies in turning the comic from the archives. “For instance, Ramayan is a Neelakantan B, project manager copies of Tenalirama and consume these stories.” characters into cartoons, which is both time-con- thrilling story and Hanuman is an action-packed in an IT company and an ardent Ramayana and plenty of dentists Patil, a former McKinsey consultant, acquired suming and also demanding in a creative sense. hero,” says Parulkar. fan of Amar Chitra Katha comics, across the city stack them even ACK in 2007 from India Book House, the original For Parulkar, the priority was to maintain ACK’s “The cartoon is modern too,” says Desai. That is happy that it is becoming more today for their younger patients. publishers, with the idea of tapping various me- signature style. “It was difficult to incorporate means archaic language is out and ‘Pitashri’ and accessible. There was a time when Recently he discovered a complete dia formats for the property.Apart from the com- the brush strokes used in the drawings and to get ‘Bhratashri’ find no place in the script. he had to hunt for his favourite collection of all ACK comics ever titles. But today he simply logs on ing TV programmes and films, Vodafone already the characters to look right from all angles. Amar The project has taken over a year to fall in published in a local magazine’s to www.amarchitrakatha.com and private library. “You find these sells ACK comics, wallpapers and ring tones. Chitra Katha is unique because they have stayed place. Finally,after months of sketching and res- buys them online. “We have grown Then ACK Media recently launched an online true to the Indian body form and anatomy. Most ketching, the studio organised a test screening to comics in the most bizarre places. up on Tinkle and ACK. My dad People still love them,” he says. multiplayer game, The Legend of Katha, based on of the Indian mythological animated characters gauge audience response. The moment the char- used to buy two copies every the comic book. The company has also partnered we see on television today still look like Pocahon- acters came on screen, the kids jumped and said month and my brother and I used Shyam Desai, another old hand, with iRemedi Corp of Atlanta to deliver ACK tas or random cartoons from the west,” he ex- they look straight out of Amar Chitra Katha to fight for them. During exam- remembers a time back in 1994 comics to the iPhone. A new website allows peo- plains. The only way out, Parulkar realised, was comics, beams Parulkar. “That is when I knew time, they were locked away in a when the ACK office caught fire. ple across the globe to purchase the comics on to get the old comic artists on board. the project was a success.” [email protected] trunk,” he recalls. Though he gave The entire archive was lost. “We his collection away to local had no copies of ACK or Tinkle and libraries, he has been rebuilding it it was very difficult to get copies for his 4-year-old son. “I learnt that had gone out of print,” he more about Indian mythology and says. A small ad was published in history from these comics than I Tinkle, asking readers to send in did from my history textbooks. I copies from their collections. “The want my son to pick up the habit response was overwhelming.