anupan sinha, a genius

The story of Anupam Sinha, creator of super-heroes
SUMATI NAGRATH11 Jul 2008

Anupam Sinha believes in creating characters who, despite having super powers, are realistic. He is ageless, is 6’ 2” tall, weighs 89 kg and, with micro snakes flowing in his blood stream instead of white blood cells, he is blessed with the power of snakes. And like a true superhero, he is a timid public relations officer by day, and a poison breath spewing, terrorism fighting vigilante by night. He is Nagraj — one of India’s most enduring indigenous comic book superheroes. Created in the late 1980s by Pratap Mullick, Nagraj is now ideated and illustrated by ace illustrator Anupam Sinha. If you’ve never heard of Nagraj — or Sinha — it is probably because the series is published in Hindi. Hugely popular in the smaller towns across the Hindi belt, both Nagraj and Sinha struggle for due recognition in the metros, where Superman, Batman, Spiderman and now Ironman dominate.
That doesn’t bother Sinha, 46, who took over the illustration of Nagraj in 1995. As Sanjay Gupta, editor and head of production at publisher Raj Comics points out, the monthly Nagraj comic series — as also the bimonthly Super Commando Dhruva — sell at least 80,000 copies per edition in North India. Sitting in his home-cum-studio in Delhi’s Rohini neighbourhood, Sinha recounts how he had to reinvent and rejuvenate the character of Nagraj without altering it much. To this day, he spends up to 18 hours every day ideating and sketching stories about Nagraj and Super Commando Dhruva.
ANUPAM SINHA
BORN: 1962, KanpurEDUCATION: Graduated in Bachelor of Science from Christchurch College, KanpurCAREER: 1975: Created first cartoon strip for Deewana Tej at age 13 1987: Joined Raj Comics and created his most well known character — Super Commando DhruvaToday: Also writes and illustrates the Nagraj seriesFAVOURITE: Other than his own creations, Batman is his favourite comic characterASPIRATION: To create a complete comic universe based on Indian characters
To those who know about Indian comics, though, Sinha is a revered figure, one who kept the industry and Raj Comics alive when others such as Diamond Comics and Indrajaal Comics were shutting shop. “Anupam Sinha revolutionised Indian comics with his work at Raj Comics,” says Amitabh Kumar, a researcher at Sarai, a division of Delhi-based research institute, Centre for the Study of Developing Societies. “He was making comics that dealt with biotechnology and cloning in the 1980s... and this is when Chacha Chaudhary was ruling the roost. Sinha is probably the vehicle on which Raj Comics rode towards its golden era.” Quite understandably, Sinha’s boss, Gupta, thinks no end of the illustrator: “His dedication and passion are unparalleled, and so many young artists joining us are inspired by him and his work.”
On his part, Sinha appears very aware of his stature. “As far as the Indian comic book industry is concerned, I am the only person who is both a writer and an illustrator,” he says rather matter-of-factly. “I have sustained two characters for over two decades.” He does, however, tip his hat to two stalwarts of the Indian comic book industry — Anant Pai and Pran Kumar Sharma. While Pai was the man who, in the 1960s, first brought Phantom and Mandrake into India and then got generations hooked onto Indian mythology through Amar Chitra Katha; Sharma created the more ‘low-brow’ strips such as Shrimatiji, Pinki, Billoo and the popular Chacha Chaudhary in the 1970s. Sinha’s forte, though, is the Indian superhero. “It is not easy to create a superhero,” he says. A tough job it is, and Sinha’s training for the role began unusually early.
Making Of A Superhero MakerStarting his career in 1975 at the tender age of 13 for a small magazine called Deewana Tej at Kanpur, Sinha got his “big break” four years later, when he joined Diamond Comics, then one of the market leaders. While working on popular comics such as Tauji and Jadoo Ka Danda, Sinha also enrolled for a Bachelor of Science degree at Kanpur’s Christchurch College.
The science degree came at the cost of an engineering one at the reputed BITS Pilani institute. “There was a big tussle inside me,” recounts Sinha. “One half of me really wanted to be an engineer, but the pull to follow my heart and talent was too strong.” While the idea was to stay put in Kanpur and keep his job, the BSc degree helped him develop “powers of observation and analysis”, which contributed in his experiments with superhero characters when he joined Chitra Bharti comics run by S. Chand & Company. It was here, while still at college, that he created his own characters for the first time — Space Star and Private Detective Kapil. The two served as early drafts for his most well known character, Super Commando Dhruva, whom he created when he moved to Raj Comics.

Sitting amidst sheets of rough drafts, blunt pencils and sketch pads from where sinewy men and voluptuous women in futuristic space-age settings stare at you, he talks about the need to create magic that appears rational. “I make my characters logical,” says the bespectacled Sinha. “There has to be a reason, a source and a defined extent of the superhero’s powers. You cannot give him a new power every time he comes up against a new adversary. That would be cheating your readers.” As someone who has never undergone any formal artistic or literary training, Sinha tends to work intuitively. “Whenever I work on developing a character, I have to think of his power, the attire, background, origins, the kind of sympathy and affection he can generate in the reader. But I also have to work hard at creating the villains.” His biggest critics are his two daughters, 12-year-old Bhavya and 11-year-old Kompal. “I cannot fool them; they read all my comics and let me know exactly what they think,” says Sinha, whose wife Jolly “sometimes helps in writing stories”.
The only son of five children born to a government officer and a housewife, Sinha had to overcome his parents’ apprehension, who felt that he would not be able to support his family financially. It was his early success that convinced them about the viability of this seemingly unconventional career. Today, Sinha believes, young writers and illustrators can actually make a living out of working in the comic book industry. “But you still need a lot of passion, as the money here is nowhere as good as, say, in an advertising agency.”
He believes that after almost a decade of quietude, the comic industry in India is on the rise again. “But there is a severe shortage of talent,” he rues. However, Sinha — who is also working on a project for the three-year-old Virgin Comics, a tie-up between UK-based Richard Branson Enterprises and the American Gotham Entertainment Group — has seen an opportunity in this and has launched his own Web-based Anupam Academy Of Art for training people in comic arts.
“My dream is to create a complete comic universe in India like what Marvel and DC Comics have done in the West,” he says. Given that India’s comic book industry — pegged at around Rs 100 crore — is projected to grow almost four-fold in the next decade, Sinha might well play the role of a superhero in that growth story. (Businessworld Issue 15-21 July 2008)