ARUN PRASAD, OWNS EVERY TINKLE
Born and brought up at Eravankara in Kerala, Arun Prasad moved to Bangalore in 1990 at the age of 15. By that time he was already a comic buff. “My grandmom was a storyteller. Be it the Puranas, mythology, she narrated all kinds of stories to us. I was completely enraptured. Maybe that’s why I got hooked to comics,” Prasad says. He graduated in History and got a journalism diploma as well. But over the years, the 42-year-old has retained an abiding love for comics, a love that has turned him into a comics archivist. There’s a term for it: pannapictagraphist. Prasad is also an artist, a researcher of history and freelance writer.
In his initial comic-reading years, Prasad depended on the local Malayala Manorama Publications that published comics in magazines like Balamangalam, Poompatta, Balarama, as also Tinkle and Amar Chitra Katha. “I remember when I was nine years, I cried for about two months, before my mom finally agreed to subscribe to Balarama, followed by Indrajal comics,” Prasad says. He got hooked to Phantom, drew Phantom action images and scribbled ‘jungle sayings’ all over his text and notebooks.
But Prasad didn’t turn collector until after he shifted to Bangalore, when he realised what he had lost – his childhood. “I lost my entire childhood comics collection when our family shifted from Kerala to Bangalore. After that, I began desperately looking for the comics that I had lost,” he says. But it wasn’t until 2000, when someone gifted him a couple of old Phantom comics, that Prasad’s quest turned serious.
Prasad owns the complete Tinkle, rare comics published by the Tirupati Temple Trust, Supremo Comics (Amitabh Bachchan as superhero), Sunny the super sleuth (Sunil Gavaskar as super hero), Dalton, Falcon, Star comics and more.
Prasad is now working on organising a proper archive of his comics. “I have converted the ground floor of my residence into a comic warehouse. Most of my important comics are placed inside boxes made from imported acid-free boards and then packed in polypropylene bags. I have some specially made white cartons and the comics are placed vertically so as to avoid the breaking of spines,” he says.