Shaila Paralkar
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Curated by Ketaki Desai with inputs from Sharmila Ganesan Ram
A brief biography
May 5, 2024: The Times of India
Shaila Paralkar, India’s first woman animator
➤ Long before the world saw a Batman villain wearing a gas mask, Indians had seen ‘The Thinker’ wearing one in a 1981 dystopian animation short by the same name. And the steady hand that designed this National Award-winning film is India’s first woman animator — Shaila Paralkar.
➤ Paralkar unknowingly stumbled into the world of animation in 1958 with a summer internship offer to fund her applied arts classes at Sir JJ School of Art. The budding illustrator hailed from a modest Goan household in Bombay and director Kantilal Rathod’s Aakar studio job proved to be a godsend. “He directed me to a lady who handed me cotton gloves, colours, a paintbrush and a pile of celluloids with sketches traced on them. As I coloured them one by one, I saw that all the frames were similar except for minor detailing. I then realised the frames would become a reel for an animation film. No one told us what animation was in those days. It was a secret art form,” recalls the 84-year-old self-taught artist.
➤ Her 40 prolific years at the Films Division of India (FDI) saw Paralkar create some of the finest animation films that went on to win both national and international acclaim. Her self-scripted anti-liquor ad film titled ‘Bottled Cannibals’ (in which a red alcohol bottle pours dread into nearby tea kettles, cups and saucers) was exhibited at international film festivals in France, Moscow, Greece and Portugal in 1979. The same year, ‘The Last Drop’ (a save oil campaign in which the rubber end of a dropper becomes a deflated planet) won a state award and was showcased in the 5th International Film Festival in France, China and Denmark. ‘The Saviour’ (in which a hero named Teekakaran threatens Rograj, the green monstrous king of diseases affecting kids, with a serpent-coiled injection) won two President’s awards for raising awareness about immunisation.
➤ She began as a Grade II artist at FDI and rose up the ranks quickly. She even got a job offer from Walt Disney studios but refused owing to family commitments in Mumbai. Her daughter Namrata believes Paralkar would have achieved much more “if not for the politics in those days”. Gayatri Rao, head of an animation firm in Mumbai, couldn’t agree more. She did her first animation internship at FDI under Paralkar and says, “She never got to head the Cartoon Film Unit of the Films Division where she was the most talented and hardworking of them all. Somehow, she got sidelined in this male-dominated world of animation.”
➤ “They didn’t like taking orders from a woman. I cannot repeat the things they said,” recalls Paralkar, saying she learnt to ignore the taunts. Namrata’s fondest memories are of Paralkar painting legendary artist Norman Rockwell’s illustrations. “Not everyone who makes animation on the computer with fancy 2D and 3D software can switch over to the old-school way. Moving a hand-drawn character is like math. You need to calculate the whole scene before you start your pencil drawing,” she adds.
➤ Her retirement at age 60 in 2000 came just before “machines” came into the picture. She continued to draw beautiful rangolis every Diwali, turned cufflinks into jewellery and knitted sweaters for near and dear ones till 2021. Her sister’s sudden death in 2022 triggered a paralytic stroke and rendered her right side immobile. Paralkar is now unable to draw, knit or paint. The former Mumbaikar now spends time playing with her pet dogs, cats and fish in her verdant, birdfriendly Pune penthouse.
➤ Paralkar doesn’t know much about AI and the threat it poses to animators. But she has seen enough machinedrawn cartoons to know that they have nothing on ‘Tom & Jerry’. “There is no life in those faces. I’m sure people will return to hand-drawn animation soon. They are bound to get tired of the AI overdose,” she says.
