Google Honours Amar Chitra Katha Creator Anant Pai With A Doodle On His 82nd Birthday | Amar Chitra Katha अमर चित्र कथा, amar citra kathā

Google Honours Amar Chitra Katha Creator Anant Pai With A Doodle On His 82nd Birthday | Amar Chitra Katha अमर चित्र कथा, amar citra kathā

Today as a tribute and occasional citation, Google is celebrating 82nd birthday of Anant pai by replacing its traditional Google logo with a Google Doodle in the memory of the great Amar Chitra Katha creator. A mouse-over over the Google Doodle reveals that it is meant to celebrate ‘Anant Pai’s 82nd Birthday’ and on clicking will lead to a search page searching for the name of ‘Anant Pai’. Read More

Amar Chitra Katha-NCL forge ‘chemical’ bond to make science fun for children | Amar Chitra Katha अमर चित्र कथा, amar citra kathā

Amar Chitra Katha-NCL forge ‘chemical’ bond to make science fun for children | Amar Chitra Katha अमर चित्र कथा, amar citra kathā

Going from one village to the other, Bhoo has been able to solve problems ranging from Arsenic poisoning to droughts. Conceived by a group of five scientists from the National Chemical Laboratory (NCL), Pune, Bhoo is a fictitious character in the cover story of Brainwave, a children’s science magazine released last month. It has been brought out in association with Amar Chitra Katha.

Kumar Vanka, one of the five scientists who have come up with cover story Twistery Chemistry Mystery, said, “The whole idea behind this story was to present science by way of story-telling. Today we have a clear dearth of presenting science to kids in a fun manner.” Others who have contributed to Brainwave include senior scientists like former director S Sivaram, Guruswamy Kumaraswamy from the exciting science group and others. Read More

Trio brings Harry Potter to Bandra | Amar Chitra Katha अमर चित्र कथा, amar citra kathā

Trio brings Harry Potter to Bandra | Amar Chitra Katha अमर चित्र कथा, amar citra kathā

Three friends stand around a table covering brand new Asterix comic books with plastic. In the backdrop, a woman stands, wearing an apron, and painting a giraffe on the wall. The room smells of fresh paint and new collections of Amar Chitra Katha, Famous Five, Malory Towers, Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings line the walls. Yellow lamps hang from the ceiling, and colourful stools and mattresses wear an inviting look. The ground floor space that has been converted into a public library at Bandra's D'Monte Park Road is getting ready to lure children into cultivating the habit of reading.

The ground floor of Princess building had been reserved by the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation for a public library and was given out on a 30-year lease to the Maharashtra Mitra Mandal in 2003. However, the library was not alive and kicking. One day, 47-year-old French teacher Vibha Kamat, who lives in the vicinity, saw the library board and entered. "It had always been my dream to open a library. I had been looking around the area for space: I checked garages, bungalows, but didn't get anything. I used to see this place every time I passed by, so I decided to inquire," she said. At the time, there was only a shelf half-filled with books. Soon, she and two of her friends got together and decided to help revamp the library. Read More

Lord Shiva the most-sought after mythological figure? | Amar Chitra Katha अमर चित्र कथा, amar citra kathā

Lord Shiva the most-sought after mythological figure? | Amar Chitra Katha अमर चित्र कथा, amar citra kathā

Mythology has always been a writer’s muse. Be it comic books, graphic novels, fiction or non-fiction, myth in India especially has always tempted a reader to go back to the mystical.

Legends came back as illustrated stories in Amar Chitra Katha and Panchatantra.

Authors Namita Gokhale’s The Book of Shiva and Andy McDermott’s The Vault of Shiva were instant hits. And even as Batman’s adventures got lapped up, copies of The Immortals of Meluha went off book racks shooting the book straight to the top of bestsellers’ lists. A pattern came into the picture. Myth lovers were devouring Lord Shiva’s tales.

When Karan Vir Arora, CEO of Vimanika Comics, put up a poll on a social networking site to decide on the mythological figure for his next series, he got a unanimous answer.

Lord Shiva was the chosen one! About 86 per cent votes went to Him. Karan’s new series, Shiva — The Legends of the Immortal, will divulge facts that were hitherto unknown.

“Shiva’s charismatic, relatable, gets angry and is human, and that makes him flawed in a human sense while still having the aura and power of a God. He’s handsome and his life is an adventure; his story has romance, drama, and action!” Karan explains.

The first of the series will focus on the origins of Shiva and his marriage to Sati. “While remaining true to the story, we are presenting Shiva in a traditional essence with trishul, damru et al with an international appeal for everyone from age 12-60,” he says.

Author Amish Tripathi kissed success with his self-published book, The Immortals of Meluha. His second book, The Secret of the Nagas, in the Shiva trilogy is already a chartbuster. “He is a democratic God. Read More

Amar Chitra Katha Pvt. Ltd. - Amar Chitra Katha अमर चित्र कथा, amar citra kathā

Amar Chitra Katha Pvt. Ltd. - Amar Chitra Katha अमर चित्र कथा, amar citra kathā

Amar Chitra Katha (Hindi: अमर चित्र कथा, amar citra kathā, "Immortal Captivating (or Picture) Stories") (Amar Chitra Katha PL)is one of India's largest selling comic book series, with more than 90 million copies sold in 20 Indian languages. Founded in 1967, the imprint has more than 400 titles that retell stories from the great Indian epics, mythology, history, folklore, and fables in a comic book format. It was created by Anant Pai, and published by India Book House. In 2007, the imprint and all its titles were acquired by a new venture called ACK Media. On September 17, 2008, a new website by ACK-media was launched.

The comic series was started by Anant Pai in an attempt to teach Indian children about their cultural heritage. He was shocked that Indian students could answer questions on Greek and Roman mythology, but were ignorant of their own history, mythology and folklore. It so happened that a quiz contest aired on Doordarshan in February 1967, in which participants could easily answer questions pertaining to Greek mythology, but were unable to reply to the question "In the Ramayana, who was Rama's mother?".

The above is an oft-told story of how ACK was founded beginning with ‘Uncle Pai’, in Mumbai in 1967. However, Outlook Magazine has this article about the genesis of this popular comic series: The idea and proposal for Amar Chitra Katha was made by a Bangalore book salesman called G.K. Ananthram which led to the first Amar Chitra Katha comics being produced in 1965—in Kannada, not English. “The English ACK titles begin from number eleven because the first ten were in Kannada,” clarifies Ananthram. To Anathram’s satisfaction, the 1965 Kannada ACK venture was a great commercial success which lead to Mirchandani in the head office in Mumbai pursuing the Amar Chitra Katha idea in English diligently, and the rest is history. “They brought in Anant Pai” says Ananthram. “And he built a wonderful team and a great brand.”

Writers like Kamala Chandrakant, Margie Sastry, Subba Rao[disambiguation needed], Debrani Mitra and C.R Sharma joined the creative team of Amar Chitra Katha, with Anant Pai taking on the role of editor and co-writer on most scripts. The notable illustrators, other than Ram Waeerkar, were Dilip Kadam, Sanjeev Waeerkar, Souren Roy, C.D Rane, Ashok Dongre, V.B. Halbe, Geoffrey Fowler and Pratap Mullick. Read More

Amar Chitra Katha founder remembered by Google doodle - Amar Chitra Katha अमर चित्र कथा, amar citra kathā

Amar Chitra Katha founder remembered by Google doodle | Amar Chitra Katha अमर चित्र कथा, amar citra kathā

Google's homepage on Saturday paid homage to Anant V Pai, who introduced Indian culture and tradition to millions of his countrymen through his Amar Chitra Katha comic series.

Drawn in the classic illustrative style of his Amar Chitra Katha and Tinkle series, the doodle showed Pai, popularly known as 'Uncle Pai', surrounded by stacks of his comics.

Born Sep 17, 1929, Pai, a chemical engineer by training, was deeply interested in the Vedas, Puranas and other ancient Indian literature, besides religious, cultural studies and languages.

Frail but active, Pai died following a heart attack in Mumbai on Feb 24 at the age of 81. Read More