Hi, john. In my opinion, you may begin with the easy and elementary Chinese characters, such as the sun -- 日, the moon -- 月, water -- 水, fire -- 火, earth -- 土, tree -- 木... All the above characters are very basic and important for you master the other complex ones, because they can also become a part of them and helpful for understanding of the meaning. e.g. 明 = 日+月, means "bright". 林 = 木+木, means "bush, forest". Then I think the basic feeling of Chinese character is established, and you may get your profound knowledge based on it. Good luck.

http://stroke-order.learningweb.moe.edu.tw/character.do (臺灣 教育部常用國字標準字體筆順學習網) youtube "華視 每日一字" (臺灣 中華電視台教學節目)

wright , wright....Practice , practice, and practice one character, 100 times to wright, 100 times to read. OK

I agree with Andian Yang so much! maybe you can try to find the books about how the chinese characters come and the story of the chinese characters and so on. you will get more fun to learn and fell more easier. But I am not sure is there indian version or not. I try to search some: e.g."Learning Chinese characters" http://books.google.com.hk/books?id=YweFHwPd05EC&printsec=frontcover&hl=zh-CN#v=onepage&q&f=false e.g. "China: Empire of Living Symbols " (good reviews) and the dvd:The Maze of Chinese Characters (Chinese/English/Spanish Version) I think it's good.

I don't think you really need a CD as besides what Anita recommended, some online dictionaries have animations for most characters, showing how to write them. I have a book 'Fun With Chninese Characters' and am very happy with it. Its three volumes teach 470 characters altogether, and really make it easy to remember them.