Amar Chitra Katha got Amin Jaffer, international director of Asian art at Christie’s, hooked to Indian art and history
As a young boy growing up in Rwanda, my only connect with India were the tales my family would narrate from time to time, mostly incidents from Indian history and art. I heard about the Taj Mahal and the mighty Mughals and formed images in my mind, but since my parents too were not first-generation Indians in Rwanda, it was difficult for me to relate to it completely.

Then one summer, when I was about 14, I visited my aunt in Brussels. I was deeply into reading by then, but at her place, most of the books were in French, a language I did not know. My aunt, who has always been a favourite with me, and has influenced my life greatly, introduced me to the Amar Chitra Katha series in English that she had collected over the years for my cousins, and for the first time, the stories of Indian history and mythology came alive in front of my eyes. Somehow it had so much more meaning and resonance than the imaginary exploits of Batman and Superman, which I had contented myself with for so long. 

The first thing that captured my imagination was the vivid visuals, and then there were the stories themselves. I was particularly fond of the Ramayana and of course, my old friends, the Mughals. The stories of the former concretised for me all the core human values that my parents would always emphasize upon—lessons in loyalty, brotherhood, morality, only it was so much more exciting to find them as part of a larger scheme of things than was apparent to me at that age. As for the Mughals, their heroism captured my imagination as much as their love for beauty and I would keep staring at the rough drawings of forts and monuments that I was only vaguely familiar with earlier. In fact, I was extremely frustrated when I ran out of the books that she had in store and when I returned home after the vacation, I begged my parents to order more for me. 

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