Amar Chitra Katha creator passes away
One of the most well-loved personalities, especially among children and the creator of the Amar Chitra Katha series, Anant Pai (fondly known as Uncle Pai) passed away in Mumbai on Thursday at the age of 79. Pai was responsible for a sort of revolution in the world of comic books. A well-known educationist and creator of Indian comic books, especially the Amar Chitra Katha series, Pai was born in Karkala district of Karnataka to Venkataraya and Susheela Pai on September 17 in 1929.
As a person Uncle Pai was known to be extremely warm and amiable. He loved children and enjoyed entertaining them by narrating mythological stories. There is an interesting story that inspired him to create the comics series. In 1967, he was watching a quiz show on Doordarshan, where he saw that a child couldn’t answer the questions related to Indian mythology, but easily answered questions pertaining to Greek mythology. He realised that children lacked basic awareness when it came to Indian mythology. Their responses led him to create the ACK series, which had an extremely friendly approach to understanding mythology and learning more about Indian culture. He studied chemical technology at Institute of Chemical Technology (UICT) and took to creative writing much later. He worked as journalist for The Times Of India and decided to quit his job to create ACK in 1967.
After a few years, in 1980, he created another famous comic book — Tinkle. They created some memorable characters like Suppandi, Shikari Shambhu, Tantri the Mantri. and Uncle Anu. Some traces of his chemical education reflect in Uncle Anu as he introduced a fascinating world of chemistry to children.
Age correspondent
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