I read my first Asterix when I was in Class 3.
I had been taken to visit an aunt. I dreaded these visits, because most of the relatives we went visiting were much older. (Almost everyone was much older; I was, after all, seven years old.)
This aunt had a son of about 10, so it wasn’t as bad.
Tired of fidgeting while the adults discussed the ailments and scandals of the extended family, I finally went scouting among his books, and found a copy of Asterix and the Big Fight (1966) that he had borrowed from a local library. The first page had a map with the words “The year is 50 BC. Gaul is entirely occupied by the Romans. Well, not entirely…”.
The next page introduced the main characters: Asterix, Obelix, Getafix, Cacofonix and Vitalstatistix. You knew the place. You knew the time. You knew the people. And when the story began with two types of Gauls under Roman occupation (assimilated and indomitable), you understood the set-up.
I didn’t know then that the map of Gaul overlapped with that of France. I didn’t know why the speech of the villainous Roman centurion Nebulus Nimbus was always rendered in thick block letters (though I did get from that that he was meant to be loud).
I’m sure I didn’t know what a nimbus was, or the meaning of “nebulous”. But the story was straightforward. The Romans enlisted the help of a friendly Gaulish chief named Cassius Ceramix to challenge Vitalstatistix. Getafix got hit on the head, lost his wits, and was unable to prepare the potion that gave our friends superhuman strength. And it was up to Asterix and Obelix to set things right.
It was only much later that I realised Cassius Ceramix, whom Vitalstatistix meets in what looks like a boxing ring, referred to Cassius Clay. Then the penny dropped. I understood why Ceramix kept wanting to be the “greatest”; and why there was a panel in which Vitalstatistix says “I’m the greatest”, after knocking him out with one punch.
On an even later reread, I realised that centurion Nebulus Nimbus (which can either be read as a vague halo or dark storm cloud), looked like a cartoon version of a specific Italian: Benito Mussolini. And saw that the druid Psychoanalytix, who used a couch for his patients and talked them into feeling better, is a stand-in for Sigmund Freud.
By the time I left my aunt’s house, I already knew one thing, though: I was going to read every Asterix comic I could lay my hands on.
I remember dragging my father to Kennedy Book House on Mount Road in Chennai, and learning, to my horror, that one Asterix album cost hundreds of rupees. I’m sure it was an even bigger shock to my father, whose experience in buying comics was limited to Amar Chitra Kathas, which retailed for ₹1.75 back then.
Buying an Asterix was out of the question.
That’s when my mother bought me my first lending library membership, to Easwari on Lloyds Road. I still remember my membership number: C-296.
In the late Terry Pratchett’s Discworld universe, there is a theory called L-space or library space. Any large collection of books, it states, can warp space and time.
Easwari was like that. Here, Enid Blyton rubbed shoulders with Archie Digests, Bulldog Drummond with James Bond and Jason Bourne, Georgette Heyer with Stephen King.
There were shelves and shelves of Mills & Boons and James Hadley Chases. And there were two shelves of comic albums, low down, close to the ground. The albums were placed flat, not vertically with spines out, so the best way to browse was to pull out a stack and go through them one by one. The cost of borrowing one for a week was about two rupees. Expensive, in those days, but well worth the price. Somehow, every time I went back, there was a whole set that had been returned, that I hadn’t seen before.
Sometimes, I would strike deals with friends. We would each focus on titles neither had read, and swap within the week. Twice the books, so half the price.
It was on one of these expeditions that I saw my first Ompa-Pa (the English translations used Ompa-Pa, not Oumpah-Pah). On the cover, written very small, were the names Rene Goscinny and Albert Uderzo.
These stories — about a young aristocrat named Hubert Brussels Sprout and his Native American friend, in 17th-century America — were a delight. I still remember sitting on the porch of my best friend’s house, the two of us giggling hopelessly over the fact that Ompa-Pa’s father was Papa-Pa.
Later, my friend introduced me to Lucky Luke; he had borrowed Apache Canyon (1971) on the strength of Goscinny’s name.
As I grew older, the books changed. They became labels. Reading Robert Ludlum in senior school sent certain signals, as did reading Camus or Sartre or Douglas Hofstadter on the college lawns. But here’s the thing: The comics were snob-proof. You could read Asterix publicly while others read Douglas Adams. You could read Lucky Luke as a 45-year-old on the metro on your way to work, and get a smile of recognition.
One of the first things I did after I started earning was to buy every Asterix album and every Lucky Luke I could find. The books were expensive, but what else was I earning for?
A few years ago, I gave them all away to a nephew. Not because I was done with them. I would never be. But because I was spreading the gospel of Goscinny.
The look of concentration and the smile on my nephew’s face as he read Asterix and the Big Fight was my reward.
(K Narayanan writes on films, videogames, books and, occasionally, technology)
