Uncle Pai

Anant Pai was born in Karkala, Karnataka to Goud Saraswat Brahmins Venkataraya and Susheela Pai. At the age of two, he lost his parents. 

He moved to Mumbai at the age of 12 and studied at the Orient School, Mahim.His first interest was to contribute for journalism. 

"He was not interested in pursuing engineering. But his elder brother forced him to do it anyway. That is how he passed out from the University of Bombay's Department of Chemical Technology (UDCT).But the day he graduated, he joined a magazine called Maanav in the 60s. This was before his marriage.Later, he joined The Times Of India (TOI) where he was in-charge of the comics section," recalled his nephew Prakash Pai.

He was extremely concerned about the fact that Indians seemed to know very little about their tradition, culture, heritage or mythology and were wooed by British and American comics. 

"When we met him on one Sunday morning, he simply asked us a few questions about Indian mythology. We simply had no answers to his questions, though we knew everything about Archie comics. 

That was when he told us that he would start a movement to enable us to know about our own heritage," said Prakash.

Prakash added that he gave up his job at TOI and set up Amar Chitra Katha and was supported by G L Mirchandani of India Book House. By the late 1970s and early 1980s, Amar Chitra Katha sold 18 lakh copies per issue.

He also started Tinkle comics, and worked with well-reputed illustrators like Prabhakar Wairkar.

After that, he went on to start the Partha Institute for Personality Development aiming to mould characters of youngsters in the age group of 10-15. He also started a magazine called Partha for the same purpose.

Anant Pai suffered a heart attack and passed away on 24 February 2011 at 5 pm.His remains have been taken to the Shivaji Park crematorium by his relatives.

We can access his creations and contributions for comics from here http://www.amarchitrakatha.com/