Pran, cartoonist
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The man whose brain worked faster than Chacha Chaudhary
The Times of India Aug 10 2014
Mumbai-based comic fan-turned-filmmaker Alok Sharma met cartoonist Pran in 2009, the year Chacha Chaudhary turned 40. The meeting -an interview for his documentary Chitrakatha which traces the history of Indian comics -was also the culmination of a childhood dream. The two met at Pran's Naraina residence-cum-studio in Delhi and spent hours talking comics. An adaptation of that interview...
He was born in Kasur, now in Pakistan.
His father was a police officer in Kasur and his mother a housewife. He was still a child when Partition happened. They had to leave everything and flee, but it wasn't easy to reach India safely . With the help of the Indian Army they reached Firozpur. All of a sudden they were homeless. It was a painful memory , they saw so much bloodshed that when he became a comic book artist he decided to stay away from violence and blood.
He just could not stand violence.
Who inspired him to become an artist?
His family wanted him to graduate and get a real job.
Art wasn't considered a profession back then. But his eldest brother Kanwarnath was an artist who graduated from the Jaipur School of Art, and he was a great influence. Pran learned art from him.
During his college days, he was published in Dainik Milap. Soon he sent some of his cartoons to Shankar's Weekly and a couple of them were published. Getting published in Shankar's Weekly was a big thing. Once he saw his name in a newspaper, it became an addiction, so he moved to Delhi, because all the big publications were here.
He started sending his cartoons to all the magazines. Initially he was just drawing pocket cartoons and most of these were political, so he decided to make cartoons that were unique. He pitched one such idea to Dharamveer Bharati, the editor of Dharmyug.
The idea was to make cartoons using lines from poems by famous poets of our time like Ramdhari Singh `Dinkar', Sumitranandan Pant, and Nirala. He got excited by the idea and named the series Kavita Cartoon. It became very popular.
From pocket cartoons to comics, how did that transition happened?
He met the editor of Navbharat Times and asked him why they relied on western comic strips like Phantom and Mandrake. He said it was because no syndication agency offered Indian strips. There was no Indian syndication service back then, so he decided to start his own, Pran Features Syndicate, and started drawing comic strips under his own banner.
It was very difficult in those days. He would write and draw his comics and then make copies. There were no photostat machines back then, so even that was a tedious and expensive process. He then posted them to publications and waited for a response. First one publication and then others took notice and slowly his comic strips were getting published in all the major dailies, magazines and in several languages.
he always felt his drawings should look beautiful because that's what attracts a cause that's what attracts a reader so he made his drawings simpler, lines clearer and wrote stories that resonated with a common Indian.
How did Chacha Chaudhary happen?
he had seen western comics and their superheroes -the muscular, good-looking Phantom, Superman, and Batman -but he wanted to change that perception, so he thought, `What if he broke the stereotype of a comic book hero'. He thought of an old man, short, not very good looking and a little frail too, but he based him on Chanakya and gave him the power of wit. This is how Chacha Chaudhary was conceived.
He started off as a village simpleton, with a turban and dhoti-kurta, he also gave him a `latth' (a laathi) but over time he had to make him modern, wearing a vest, a tie, sports shoes and carrying a walking stick.
But two of his most prominent features still remain 100% desi -his moustache and his turban. Not only the look but his stories changed over time. In his initial days he was fighting petty criminals, pickpockets, conmen, and thieves but in the 70s when the nation was facing a huge problem of dacoits Pran introduced a dacoit character -Gobar Singh. Later plane hijackings, terrorism, cricket matches found their way in. You need to keep up with the times.
His characters like Chacha Chaudhary and Sabu are bigtime foodies...
That's because Pran was a foodie. He was a Punjabi, and Punjabis are known for their love for good food. He loved animals, so almost all his characters got that from him as well. Chacha Chaudhary has a pet dog Rocket, but Rocket isn't some Alsatian or a Rottweiler, he is your normal stray dog, who came and stayed with Chacha forever. Pinky has a pet squirrel Kutkut.
He also included games like stapu, chor-police, aankh micholi so kids would get curious and learn more about these games. Insects like Beer-Bahuti are now getting extinct, when he read about that he wrote a story about Beer-Bahuti in one Pinky Comic and many people told him their kids wanted to know about the insect. So, you can do a lot with comics and your characters need to keep that innocence and that charm intact, May be that's why comic book characters never grow old. Except Billoo -he made him grow from a five-year-old naughty kid to a teenager with a friendgirlfriend to add fun to his life.
People said comics have been hit hard by the advent of cable TV and internet?
Pran didn't think so. One shouldn't be afraid of new technology but embrace it. He was the first one to try computer colouring in India in his comic Chacha Chaudhary aur Chor Ki Talaash. He thought these new mediums can be used to expand the reach of comics like they did in US and Japan. He always felt Chacha Chaudhary can easily be adapted in any medium. They recorded radio Shows featuring him and later a TV show which despite its low-budget production worked really well. Think about it -600 episodes of Chacha Chaudhary, itni to comics nahin banaayi maine..., Pran said.
The creator of Chacha Chaudhury
Pran, creator of comic book character 'Chacha Chaudhary', dies
PTI | Aug 6, 2014
Eminent cartoonist Pran Kumar Sharma (1939-2014), popularly known as Pran, gave life to the lovable comic characters Chacha Chaudhury and his friend Sabu
His publisher was Diamond Comics. He was 75.
He had a son and a daughter
Prime Minister Narendra Modi described Pran "as a versatile cartoonist who brought smiles on the faces of people through his rich work".
Born in Kasur, near Lahore in Pakistan in 1938, Pran began his career in 1960 as a cartoonist for the Delhi-based newspaper 'Milap' with comic strip 'Daabu'. In 1969, Pran sketched Chacha Chaudhary for the Hindi magazine 'Lotpot', which made him famous.
"Pran was making small cartoons for newspapers when I first contacted him in 1981. At that time there were no Indian comics, it was all reproductions of foreign titles. For the last 35 years we have been the sole publisher of his cartoons," said Rai.
With a career spanning over five decades, Pran employed a simple style of art and sense of humour to create a family of characters like Shrimatiji, Pinki, Billoo, Raman and Channi Chachi, which are regularly published in Indian magazines.
