Chacha Chaudhry and Aflatoon

- Pran

Yes, He of the computer-esque brain :)

These hols have been long and generously peppered with maternal shrieks of "Clean the damn bookshelf". Now, cleaning the bookshelf takes superhuman efforts and Old testament levels of tolerance for minor dust storms.

Buried under tottering piles of books I'll never read again( old Gokulams, VC ASndrews, Maeve Binchy and her ilk), I found various mangy copies of Chacha Chaudhry, Billu and Pinky. The charm of these regulars in the class 4 days of youth still shines on. All the reasons for reading it in those days of yore, stand firm today. May pulpy tackiness and hideous grammar shine forever.

I read This one from cover-to-cover. the first page has that unflattering mug shot of Pran, a man I greatly respect for churning out infinite number of comics. The first story in this one has the truck Dag-Dag. I wont go into details of the other "plots", but needless to say, volcanoes did explode on Jupiter and there were many cries like "Hu-Huba"

The appeal of Chacha Chaudhary lies in his middle-class, common man image and the complete absence of any visible physical powers. Sabu (soap man!!!) shines in all the stories, his overwhelmingly huge, black Speedo-clad frame hogging the limelight. The usual elements remain,particularly dialogues like , " I go now", " Oh-ho. The hut fly" " Chacha-ji, you are an angle"

An angle he is, to the many people who rush to him for aid after being bullied/extorted/robbed/cheated/cursed/tortured. He helps them all out and gives us searing glimpses into his computer like brain.

We like. Tackiness is a fine art form, and I'm currently pleased to wallow in it :)

Rating:

Vanilla Frappe. Just because :) This is a giggle fiesta from the first panel.