Like every other child who grew up on the staple diet of TINKLE and AMAR CHITRA KATHA, Uncle Pai was no stranger to me.
The first time I came across Uncle Pai's creations was in a magazine called Children's World. It had a monkey called KAPISH – a fascinating character who aroused my interest in comics. I guess it must have been also the first thread of my association with Uncle Pai ...I must have been 10 years old then. And again it was the Indrajal Comics edited by Uncle Pai (didn’t know this then) that was my second stepping stone towards meeting up with this great story teller called Uncle Pai.
And so throughout my childhood TINKLE and Amar Chitra Katha and Uncle Pai played a very important role in my life and a lot of my friends in school. For me history was never boring and mythology was a colourful array of pictures. I still distinctly remember the wonderful artworks of Ram Waeerkar, Jeffery Fowler, Soren Roy and Vasant Halbe to name a few of those talented Illustrators who along with Uncle Pai gave life to our culture, our mythology, our history, our folk tales ...
In 1992, when I saw an advertisement for the post of an artist I walked into the TINKLE office at Mahalaxmi Chambers with a few cartoons I had done in college. They were shown to Uncle Pai – he did not see me then. The cartoons came back, ten of them, with a note and his signature pencilled on the artworks. “Oh they are nice ...tell the artist to keep on giving us cartoon gags like these ( they were called See And Smiles) and we will pay him Rs. 50 per gag", he said.
I was on the top of the world...I had earned my first Rs. 500 and Uncle Pai had seen them!
Throughout his life Uncle Pai groomed artists and writers and I am proud to say that I am one of them – a commerce graduate who worked as a copywriter in ad agencies, with no art school qualifications.
Giving me a break and nurturing me as an artist was the best thing I could have ever asked for. Right from the day I joined in 1994 ( I worked as a freelancer for a couple of years) Uncle Pai, now my boss Mr. Pai, showed immense confidence in me, giving me complete freedom to grow as an artist. Of course his excellent team consisting of Mr. Rane the Art Director and the Associate Editor Ms Reena Puri were the backbone of the best years the magazine has seen.
I distinctly remember Mr. Pai chatting with me on my favourite subject – the artists behind Amar Chitra Katha – and he very patiently filling me up on the history of ACK. The talks were endless.
He always had the time and countless stories to share. His animated conversations, spiced with anecdotes from scriptures of every religion, left me spell bound every time I left his cabin.
He had his own way of correcting errors. I remember once I made a mistake in one of my artworks by showing a Muslim character wearing an earring. He called me to his cabin and he must have spoken to me for more than half an hour about Islam...I learnt a lot that day about Islam, besides the fact that men wearing earrings is not appreciated.
The mere mention of his name to my friends and relatives would start a cascade of questions about him.
"Oh Uncle Pai...you work with him...? You see him every day?... How does he look? .... endless questions. And every time I answer these questions it makes me proud that I am part of a story called "TINKLE", that Uncle Pai started in 1980.
Today when I remember Mr. Pai a sense of satisfaction comes to my heart that yes, I took the right decision to be an artist and not a copywriter.
