Also, we kept mythology out of it, because we didn’t want Tinkle to compete with ACK,” he said over a telephonic interaction from his residence in Mumbai.
It was visualised as a children’s monthly digest, because of its variety of stories, a two-page feature on science, animal life and a few brain teasers, along with a lot of readers’ participation. Tinkle began as a monthly magazine, and later became fortnightly. While the format would be a magazine, the medium would be comics. I still felt that there was a large chunk of reading material out there, and that there was a scope for monthly comics.
“Back then, if I recall correctly, there were only two children’s magazines: Shankar’s Children’s Book Trust and India Today Group’s ‘Target’. The idea to start Tinkle magazine came to Rao, as he wanted a spin-off for Amar Chitra Katha (ACK) comics which were already in circulation and doing quite well with their tales of Indian mythology. In fact, Rao’s role was instrumental right from the conception of its name to bringing to life certain key characters which are immensely popular even today! On the occasion of the magazine’s 40th anniversary on November 14, reached out to Subba Rao, who was a part of the core team (he was also the then Associate Editor of Amar Chitra Katha), along with Luis Fernandes, editor Anant Pai - also fondly referred to as ‘Uncle Pai’ - and Kamala Chandrakant.
