Chacha Chowdhury: From local strip to comic book legend

Chacha Chaudhary, the now legendary comic character, popular among the young and the old alike had humble origins over four decades ago, as a mere three-page comic strip in a children's magazine.
While the eponymous comic is now a collector's item, its creator Pran first imagined Chacha, the endearing red-turbaned avuncular man, during his stint as a freelancer with the Hindi magazine 'Lotpot'.
P K Bajaj, current proprietor of the Delhi-based publisher S L Prakashan (Mayapuri group), which owns 'Lotpot' magazine, fondly recalls the days of inception.
"Pran sahab's wife used to write stories for our publication. One day she told me about her cartoonist husband. We then met and decided to create a character for the magazine that would have a universal appeal among children...And, the rest as they say is history," Bajaj told PTI.

Pran, who was given just three pages to begin with, soon attracted a lot of fans with the creation of a character, possessing a wondrous mix of wit, humour, intelligence and quirkiness in equal measure.
"The readers of 'Lotpot' were welcomed with three colourful pages presenting the exploits of their lovable 'chacha' and soon he became a household name," Bajaj said.

Chowdhury's trusted partner, 'Sabu', he said, "was introduced only after 15 issues". Pran's association with the three-page strip continued till the magazine's 300 numbers after which the cartoonist joined the Diamond Comics house.
"It was from there on that the character of the chacha took shape into a full-fledged comic book," he said.

Bajaj said, 'Lotpot', the magazine that itself was famous for its quirky 'Motu-Patlu' characters fashioned on the famous comic duo of 'Laurel and Hardy', was first published fortnightly but in 1973, "we made it a weekly".
The same publication also brings out the popular film magazine 'Mayapuri'.
"We had our farm house in Delhi. And, there people always used to address elders as 'chacha-chacha' and , we thought the name would have a currency among the children," Bajaj said.
The idea, he said, was to come up with a character that would be an "answer" to say an 'Aladdin' or a 'Superman' among others, which were beginning to make inroads into the domestic comic market.