Future of Cartooning in India
How did your characters become so popular?
When I started in 1960, I realised that all popular cartoon characters, be it Dennis the Menace or Tarzan, were Western. There are many of us who neither understand them, nor enjoy them.
Chacha Chaudhary is a typical man you who can find on the roads of Chandni Chowk and Pinki is a five-year-old you will find in every nook and corner. Billu is a typical Indian teenager who is a cricket buff.
Does journalism also play a role in your genre of cartooning?
I have been around for the past 50 years. And the reason why I could sustain for this long is that I have changed the theme of my comics according to the changing paradigms of society. When pickpockets and burglary became an everyday occurence, I wrote around the problems. The series I made on a character called Raman were based on communal harmony. One comic named Raman Hum Ek Hai was released by the late Indira Gandhi in 1983.
What do you think about the future of cartooning in India? Are you concerned about the plunging popularity of printed comics?
Sales suffered around six to seven years ago though they have increased of late. What we need to do is to capitalise on the strengths of other mediums of communication such as the Internet or TV. When my comics were made into TV serials and were screened a few years ago, the sales of my printed comics soared.
We shouldn't consider TV as our competitor but a medium which can be exploited to the advantage of print.
What advice would you like to give to young aspiring cartoonists?
I would suggest that they take up cartooning as a profession but they should be ready to put in years of struggle and hard work. In every creative field, there is a lot of toil involved before you can carve out a niche for yourself.
It took me around seven years before I was earning enough to support my family.
Author: Vimal Chander Joshi (HT Horizons)
Date: 12th November, 2010
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