My summer job with ACK

I remember Anant Pai telling me once, more than 25 years ago, of how the first issues of ACK were born.

It was about 30 years ago that I met Pai in his basement office at Mahalaxmi Chambers, near Cadbury House, Mahalaxmi. It was the summer vacation after my class 10 board exams and Pai wanted to know my plans for the holidays. Our conversation opened up a summer job for me at ACK, as we called that office. I did odd jobs, helped around during book exhibitions in Mumbai, and went bookshop to bookshop, vendor to vendor, collecting orders for ACK titles.

The first time I felt a sense of professional achievement was when a newspaper vendor in pyjamas sitting in a tiny shack placed an order for 10,000 copies of various ACK titles. I was stunned and Pai was proud. That experience taught me never to be fooled by first impressions.

At ACK, I saw the birth of the entertaining children’s comic, Tinkle. I saw the seriousness with which Pai treated letters pouring in from children — on postcards, inlands and envelops. He was famous as ‘Uncle Pai’ and we got letters from all corners of the country, including the smallest towns and talukas. Since he could not reply to all individually, he sent out printed letters in a handwriting font with his signature. I was quite impressed when I first saw those letters and part of my job involved the chore of getting them mailed.

Pai did not like shoddy work and we were afraid of entering or being summoned to his wood-and-glass cabin. His team was a friendly lot — Dennis, Olivia, Subba Rao, Nira Benegal. I was a kid but I remember his instructions to the seniors: one had to be thorough with the research and no gory stuff in the illustrations.

Once a group of us kids was at an exhibition near his Prabhadevi home and our lunch break happened in his flat. After lunch we were about to rush back when he waved and asked us to relax for another 10-15 minutes. I remember him saying, “Even a hardworking bull needs to take a break.”

Pai was passionate about his love for children. He wanted them to overcome their fears, develop self-esteem, and be confident. He never saw his work purely as a business model, set up to maximise profits year after year.

His Rang Rekha Features syndicate issued interesting factoids and snippets and I remember some of the publications and workshops for children from his Partha Institute for Personality Development. The Pais had no children and it amazed me no end that they poured so much of love and affection on the children around them.

I left Bombay in 1987 and met him just once after that. In the last two months I was making and breaking plans to visit him with my family and seek his blessings. Alas! I lost him on Friday…for ever.