In ACK’s biographical comic book about Anant Pai and the making of the series ( Anant Pai, 2010), we have a metanarrative around the mythology of the man who made an exceptional success of writing/drawing mythology. The issue was printed in February 1970, and this year the blue god, as introduced to us by Pai, turns fifty. The iconic cover image of Krishna depicts a young boy in a distinct shade of blue, a bright halo around his head, his hand dipped in a forbidden pot of curd, his sharply turned eyes (looking out of frame to the top right corner) reflecting the confident stealth of his mischief. Coloured manually with a palette of 26 colours, Krishna also set in place the template of how the devas, asuras and mortals would be depicted in all the ACK comics the followed. It was unlike anything seen in Indian bookstores at that time, and represented a bold publishing decision that would significantly shape and impact the reading aesthetic of several generations of children in India.įor an early title, Pai scripted and edited the story of Krishna’s birth and childhood from the Bhagavat Puran with illustrations by Ram Waeerkar. More than a decade before my encounter with Tinkle, in 1967, Anant Pai started working on comics based on Indian mythology under the Amar Chitra Katha (ACK) label. Uncle Pai wrote that even though it pained him to write the rejection, “It will pain me more, however, if you stop writing just because of one rejection letter.” The first issue of Tinkle had appeared in 1980 when I was six and my mother had made sure I acquired every single issue as soon as it came to the bookstore, a collection we kept up for years. It was one of the kindest letters I have ever received.
It was the first time I had fancied myself a writer destined for the public eye, and as much as the rejection stung, I was dazzled that no other than Uncle Pai (as Anant Pai was popularly known) had taken the trouble to write an entire letter addressed to me. I was eleven years old and had made two story submissions to the popular comic series Tinkle published by Anant Pai. Mine came as a handwritten yellow postcard with small closely packed letters in black ink.
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