As a quirk of fate, when I started formal education in Ranchi (those days infamous for the mental asylum, now famous as the home of MSD) at St. Mary’s Doranda I had to take up Hindi as my second language and not Bengali (my mother tongue). And then for the next 18-20 years, all the way to university, I had to study Hindi. But we are not native speakers of the language. So something that taught me to read Hindi was Chacha Chaudhury comics (though my Hindi teacher would have preferred me reading the daily Sanmarg).
Created by our very own Pran, it was a staple for all children in in 1980s and 1990s.
Here are some images of Chacha in a new avatar.
These are created by Sumit Kumar:
