Those were the days …

Reading this post (picked up from Desipundit), I was suddenly transported to an age when the world used to revolve around waiting for the next batch of Raj Comics series to come out. This was before Superman, Spiderman, Batman were known to me; and Tintin and Asterix would have then sound like Greek and Roman philosophers. I had grown fairly bored with the Amar Chitra Katha stack in my house and had completely missed the Diamond comics revolution. So I had jumped straight into the Raj Comics bandawagon – Nagraj, Super Commando Dhruv, Bhokal, Paramanu and later Doga became the super heroes of my childhood.

As with most super heroes – most of these had fairly angsty beginnings; Nagraj was a mutant developed to be a hired killer, Dhruv had his parents killed in front of his eyes (Batmanish I know, but who really cares), Doga had his entire akhada wiped out by a rival gang and so on. Somehow all these incidents made them mentally indestructible endowing them with a will and powers beyond mere mortals. Most of these guys were based out of Rajnagar, except Bhokal who displayed his powers in the ancient world. I personally liked Dhruva the best, he had no special powers per se (except that he could communicate with animals) and succeeded mainly because of the agility of his body and mind. Nagaraj was what I started with; but the series became drab after he went around the world eliminating the different villians who had gathered in the first comic bidding for his services as an assasin. Dhruva series on the other hand continued to be interesting for a much longer time.

Talking of super heroes, can we not talk about super villians? Nagraj’s villians had a global flavour; american gangsters, african poachers, egyptian mummies included. Their motives were mostly power and rarely destruction; they were almost never competent without their armies and henchmen whom Nagraj quickly and efficiently dispatched with the snakes out of his hand or when stretched with that ultimate weapon, Visfoonkar (poison breath). Dhruvas’ were more classy (at least after the first few ones). They were mainly scientists gone mad (Dr. Virus, Grand Master Robo, Bauna Vaman, Chumba) or insane protectors hunting for the objects of their affections (Kirigi, Samri); they were people who had merely flipped, not necessarily born bad. Sometimes these heroes (primarily Nagraj and Dhruva) came together to fight a common evil (Lady Killer). That was a lot of fun. You would two for the price of one !!!

When I started, these comics were priced at Rs. 7 /- for the normal ones and Rs. 15 /- for the digests which were thicker, involved the more glamorous and deadly villians and had glossy covers. Every month five of such issues would come out and the local bookshop would lend out each for a day at Re 1 /- or Rs 2 /- for the normal ones and digests respectively. I still remember me and my brother tossing coins as to who would get to read first. Another vivid memory is that of us playing the comic vs comic game. We would each pick out one comic and pit the characters of each against the other in some kind of battle in our minds and somehow come come to conclusion that one character would win. Almost always the person who took “Kirigi ka Kahar” won; primarily because it had duplicates of the major characters.

I remember reading these till 10th standard but seriously followed the series till around 8th. First Hardy Boys and then the Forsyths, Archers and Ludlums took over their places in my bookshelves. And though it has been close to 10 years since I picked up one of those, the images remain vivid in my memory and only a small push is needed to trigger a wave of nostalgia.