Friday, April 5, 2013

He's like the Indian Batman, only better. DOGA

Now I don't know how many of you know this but Doga is one of the coolest (anti)heroes ever. Yes, he's Indian. Yes, he has a secret identity. Yes, he doesn't respect the law and yes, he stands up for the poor and the weak.
Did you know, Doga's real name is Suraj? Khee-khee.


I read Doga for the first time when I was in the fourth grade. I came up with this brilliant idea that all of us from the neighborhood would hold a weekly library at our houses and the others would pick a book (or more) and return them in the following week (or re-issue it).
[Side note: Yeah, I was always cool.]

The plan was almost a success except that most parents started seeing this as a burden. Lots of kids in their house creating a ruckus, touching things, eating biscuits, spilling drinks and you know, so it ended pretty soon. Also, we wanted to play more. Get some exercising done. Less hassle.
I don't know if this is something my friends remember and agree if this was a cool thing to do but I owe it to this idea most of the things I know about Indian comic books.
As a child, I was born in the times (90s) when every household had a television so obviously, I wasn't much into reading. Unlike my brother, who started reading comic books before he was even four, I didn't start until much later.
Going back to the story, almost everything I know about Indian comic books, I owe to the childish idea of holding a weekly library. One of my friend's brothers was into comics and when she held the library at her place, I was fascinated by all those drawings and all those speech bubbles. After the first week itself, I realised issuing/borrowing a couple of books for a whole week was a bad idea. I needed more. Also, I needed things to keep me busy and to help me put off my holiday home-work forever (that shit really sucked).
I started borrowing more and more comic books from my friend. That's how I read a lot of Raj Comics' stuff like Super Commando Dhruv, Nagraj, Bankelal, Hindi translations of The Phantom, Mandrake and even Archie (amongst many more obscure comic books). Chacha Chaudhary, Pinki-Billoo and those kind of things were my old friends and regular fillers.
I cannot stress enough how much I enjoyed reading Doga but I also knew I was more attracted to finishing off stuff like Bankelal which was pure humor. After the library thing ended, all of us stopped borrowing books and so did I. I had to finally get down to that holiday home-work and Dexter's Laboratory and you know, sleeping and bugging my brother and so I never really got to reading Doga extensively.
However, I now have a good news. I got an internship a couple of months ago and I get paid (that's not the good news). I have decided to either waste the money or invest it. The first time around, I decided on semi-wastage and semi-investment which is why I bought a coffee maker. The second time around, I decided on a complete and foolish wastage and that's how I ended up with some new clothes and this time, a brilliant investment. I bought the entire collection of Doga comics online.
The package just arrived today and I am happy.



Also, I got a huge Doga poster as free gift. Yey-hey!

8 comments:

  1. Anurag Kashyap is making a film about Doga too.

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  2. Yeah. I think it'll release in the next few years.

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  3. Used to read a lot of Doga comics as a kid but I don't subscribe to his brand of "justice". Regardless, the two-parter where he and Anthony teamed up, I quite liked XD

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  4. i remember our childhood weekly library where we used to exchange books... awe-sum idea it was ...now i realized :P

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  5. I had amazing 2 minutes reading this blog! :D
    Btw I'm a Super Commando Dhruva fan and Doga comes second. I loved their team-up in Nishachar if you remember :)
    Keep reading Bejin!

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  6. That's Cool... You gave me a great option to invest my first stipent which I earned.

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