Chandamama! The name makes us nostalgic. Chandamama gave us a childhood full of information and entertainment bundled in a comic format. Pity on the kids of this generation who are unaware of Chandamama. You might have read Chandamama several times, or you might have had it read to you. Did you ever think how it all started? What was the origin of the Chandamama Books. Let us take a look into the history of the books that have influenced us for nearly 6 decades.
 
ORIGINS
The book was launched by none other than great producers and founders of Vijaya Productions, Nagireddy and Chakrapani. The first edition of ‘Chandamama’ was released in the month of July, 1947 and had been published up until two years ago with little interruptions.
 
It was meant to lead and inspire the children of India, despite the differences in their mother-tongues, to dream, enjoy and imbibe the spirit of the vast Indian heritage through stories. It is the firm conviction of B.N. Reddy and Chakrapani who believed that this noble mission was blessed and destined to succeed. That is what enabled the two friends to build up a team of committed writers and illustrators to pool their talents together in making Chandamama a vibrant success. Chandamama was published in 14 languages, including Sanskrit and Santhali.
 
Chandamama was first published in Telugu and Tamil (as Ambulimama) in July 1947. The Kannada edition first appeared in July 1949 followed by Hindi in August 1949. Marathi (as Chandoba) and Malayalam (as Ambili Ammavan) editions appeared in April 1952 followed by Gujarati in 1954, English in 1955, Oriya (as Jahnamamu) and Sindhi in 1956,Bengali in August 1972, Punjabi in 1975, Assamese in 1976, Sinhala in 1978, Sanskrit in April 1984 and Santali in 2004. The Punjabi, Sindhi and Sinhala editions were published only for a short period. No English editions were published from October 1957 to June 1970.
 
The readers of ‘Chandamama’ can never forget the artists like Vaddaddi Paapayya who signed as Vapa, Chitra, Dasari Subrahmanyam’s serials like ‘Pathala Dugam’, ‘Vichitrakavalalu’, ‘Rakaasiloya’, ‘Durgesa Nandini’ etc. Further, Vasundhara, Bommidi Achcharao, Malladi enriched our culture and traditions with their wonderful stories. They included such names as M.T.V. Acharya, T. Veera Raghavan, who signed his work as Chithra; Vaddadi Papaiah,; Kesava Rao who signed as Kesava; M. Gokhale; and K. C. Sivasankaran, alias Sankar, who joined Chandamama in the year 1951, and continues to draw even now in 2011, in an unbroken association of 6 decades! Later artists such as Shakthi Dass; M. K. Basha, who signed as Razi; Gandhi Ayya, aka Gandhi; and P. Mahesh (Mahe), also continued the tradition into current times.
 
TERMINATION OF CHANDAMAMA:
In 2007, Chandamama was acquired by technology company Geodesic Information Systems. Chandamama has stopped publishing in all languages from March 2013, without issuing any press release and without giving any notifications or refund to subscribers.
 

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