Comics can change your Life!!

I recently read that Chandamama turned sixty and remembered my early years as an avid reader.

My introduction to books (non academic) was with “Chandamama”. It was the English version of the marathi “Chandoba” that was already subscribed for my brother and sister. The stories about Indian mythology, history and folk tales filled every issue of the book. Each story had a moral and taught something new and exciting to me. I still remember few stories and the morals that they talked about. The stories engraved lot of good culture and principles that would have taken ages for my parents to sit and explain. Chandamama offered me knowledge about my culture and heritage as well as hooked me on to reading. The other early stage book that taught me to understand good and evil, to respect others and to value friends was “Champak”. I was a big fan of Champak for the number of stories it presented in a single issue.

I pursued my hobby and my hunger for more made me move to other comic books. The next book that caught my attention was “Tinkle”. This is a compilation of strip comic stories about various different people and events. “Supandi” was my favorite while “Kalia, the crow” and “Sambhu Shikari” were always entertaining. Stories of not more than few pages always excited me while single page humors were a great break from homework. I was so latched on Tinkle that I could not sleep without reading few pages from it. I even had a pattern of reading Tinkle. The sequence was to read the title story followed by Sambhu Shikari and then other stories. The single pagers were the last to be read.

Sambhu Shikari was my first hero. It was the same time that I watched “Superman-1” and was fascinated by the superhero powers. My thirst for more superheroes was quenched by “Indrajal Comics”. Phantom, Mandrake, Flash Gordon, Bahadur and several other superheroes lived with me for several years in the books. I even tried few stunts that didn’t have the same positive results as Phantom or Bahadur. I got bruised knees, multiple band-aids and also scolding from my parents for imitating my heroes.

I never liked history in school. There was no fun in learning about dead people and old battles. However, all this was changed by “Amar Chitra Katha”. I should admit that my liking for freedom fighters, great Indian kings as well as great cities and monuments was brought to life by ACK. I can still remember the ACK books that I read at my mom’s school. If my academic books were as good and colorful as the ACK books, I would have never disliked social studies.

My teenage years were dedicated to “Archies”. This book was mix of different culture as well as jokes for my age. The friendship, problems within a group, suspense and mysteries that the book presented were interesting and kept me craving for more. As I grew older, I went from picture/ strip comics to novels like “Hardy Boys”. The mysteries they solved and difficulties they encountered always made me day dream of solving such cases.

I have been reading books for about 20 years and have read various types of books including novels by “Sydney Sheldon”, “Dan Brown”, “Jon Grisham”, etc and even Management books. Books have taught me a lot about the world I live in. The different books I read at various stages of my life have enriched my knowledge differently. I can confidently say that books have mentored and developed me as a person.

In today’s world, we have forgotten the importance of books. The high tech technology has influenced the kids so much that the word “notebook” is applied to laptops. The fun of reading books is fading with time. The childhood hobbies of reading books are getting replaced with computer and video games. The kids are losing vital years of learning to read. John Steinbeck rightly quotes,

“Learning to read is probably the most difficult and revolutionary thing that happens to the human brain and if you don't believe that watch an illiterate adult try to do it”