Letter from Delhi: Remembering India’s Walt Disney

Pran Kumar Sharma's simply drawn comic books and stories captured an India of a simpler, more insular era.

Comic book character Chacha Chaudhary is seen in this illustration by famed artist Pran Kumar Sharma. Image courtesy www.chachachaudhary.com

NEW DELHI // As a boy, when I was learning to draw, I often tried to capture the look of the comic book character Chacha Chaudhary: the big red turban, the round face behind the white brush moustache, the natty vest and shoes.

I got it right often, even at that early age. Part of Chacha Chaudhary’s appeal – the character as well as the comic book series named after him – was the simplicity of line, plot and dialogue. It was the hallmark style of Pran Kumar Sharma, known simply as Pran during his decades as India’s most beloved comic book artist.

Pran died of colon cancer on Wednesday at 75, in a hospital in Gurgaon, Haryana.

His career spanned 50 years, and his most famous work, the Chacha Chaudhary comics – in which he produced more than 500 titles, published in 10 languages, including English – prompted the World Encyclopedia of Comics to call him "the Walt Disney of India".

On Twitter, the prime minister Narendra Modi called Pran “a versatile cartoonist who brought smiles on the faces of people through his rich work”.

Chaudhary, an old but sprightly man, fought crime with the help of a hyperactive dog named Rocket and a giant from Jupiter named Sabu. Sabu, clad only in briefs, boots and earrings, was all brawn, but it was always Chaudhary’s smarts that won the day.

His mind, Pran reminded us in every story, worked faster than a computer.

"When I was growing up, I'd read a bunch of comics from outside India – Archie, for instance, or Tintin," said Mangala Parthasarathy, an advertising professional. "But there was always a certain happiness in seeing a Chacha Chaudhary title – a home-grown comic book that was so rooted in India."

Pran was turning out Chacha Chaudhary comics even in his final weeks.

“He was a workaholic,” Jyoti Pran, his daughter-in-law, told the Times of India newspaper. “He was admitted to the hospital on July 17. The day before, he was working on a comic. Even after getting admitted, he worked on that comic for three days.”

Born in a small town in what is now Pakistan, Pran and his family moved to India after the partition of the subcontinent. He earned a degree in political science but then switched streams, starting a fine arts degree from the prestigious JJ School of Arts in Mumbai but ended his studies before getting a degree.

He began drawing cartoons in 1960 magazines, but it wasn't until in 1969 that Pran first drew a Chacha Chaudhary panel for the Hindi humour magazine Lotpot.

The strip began appearing regularly in 1971. He created other characters as well, but Chaudhary proved to be the most memorable.

In 1981, Gulshan Rai, the publisher of Diamond Comics, signed Pran to turn his cartoon strips into full-fledged comic books. The association with Diamond Comics lasted until Pran's death, although Pran kept the copyright over his characters. Chacha Chaudhary even made a brief foray into television in 2002, but it lasted for only one season.

Unlike the Tintin or Asterix comic series, Pran's stories were pure fantasy. The Chacha Chaudhary series main audience was young boys and girls, who could suspend their disbelief to enjoy a story featuring Sabu sitting atop a flying airplane, or Chaudhary being abducted to Mars or mystical potions that imparted great strength.

Amid all the fantasy, though, was Pran’s firm belief that old-fashion Indian common sense was all that was needed to foil the most dastardly criminals.

A light bulb would go on over Chaudhary’s head, and his idea would always work perfectly. This was the sort of easy, aimless reading that was ideally suited to long summer holidays.

It's also the sort of reading I cannot imagine that children today do at all. There's too much razzmatazz on television and the internet for my nephews, for example, to seek out the less sophisticated charms of Chacha Chaudhary.

But India has changed too, its culture more easily absorbing, and influencing, that of the West, so that home-grown comics now largely consist of Indian riffs on American superheroes.

Pavitr Prabhakar, a licensed, localised version of Spider-Man, is one such example.

Pran was a cartoonist for his time, a time when India was more insular and less confident. And he produced his comics with a clear-eyed objective.

“If I can make one person happy,” he wrote at the end of every comic book, “I will consider my mission complete.”