Hello to nostalgia

An eclectic choice of subjects made 'the India magazine' a collector's item for some readers like me

Terrascape often brings back memories of similar magazines from the past. There are not many that I remember, though. Of the few I do, 'the India magazine' – yes, that is how the title was printed on the cover page and inside too – was certainly the most picturesque, attractive and informative of its time. There was one other magazine quite a long time before that, the Onlooker, patterned on the Life and the Post magazines, of America but that was a rather poor immitation. I have also somewhere copies of a still older travel and cultural magazine, the Indian State Railway, published by the Central Publicity Bureau of the Indian Railways for railway passengers in the days when there were still no air flights. There was yet another similar publication for railway travellers in the 1930s published by the Times of India group. In later years, there was the Times of India Magazine and later still the Illustrated Weekly. They were all an amalgam of illustrated, feature articles on travel, literature and social and cultural issues.

'the India magazine' was different. It did not copy the Life’s half folio format of illustrated feature magazines but was draped in A4 size of news magazines such as Time, Newsweek and the similarly sized Indian news magazine of those years, Link. Its writing was not really great and was, actually, often rather just tolerable, but it was profusely illustrated in colour and b&w and often adorned with beautiful line drawings. The most interesting part was its rather broad and eclectic choice of subjects—art, architecture, archaeology, nature, travel, faith, food and folk culture and, occasionally, even political cartoons of OV Vijayan. The magazine was attractively designed and well produced. There was a certain freshness about its choice of photographs, the range and breadth of its features. Almost every issue took readers to some quaint, unheard of remote place or introduced them to an artist or dancer or a new development in theatre or photography.

Then, there was the Raj nostalgia which was beginning to show up in the 1980s, both here at home and in England. Features on the Raj theme were popular with readers of the older generation, especially as they were accompanied with reproductions of engravings and aquatints from rare publications of the 17th and 18th centuries. Actually, when the letters column was introduced first in the first anniversary issue in January 1982, I think, it had a nostalgic period engraving of a dak gherry from some such publication and the page was evocatively named Dak. When readers’ responses were published on a page called Comment, the illustration at the top was again a Raj evocation.

Very early in its career, the magazine acquired an all-India character and readership penetrated deep into small towns. Its editor, Malvika Singh, came from a well-known and a well-connected Delhi family and was therefore soon able to attract the attention of a wide circle of influential people at home and abroad for readers. She was a skillful promoter of her magazine. She made it a point to send complimentary copies of her magazine to contemporary celebrity writers and authors. Not many of them were attracted enough to send in contributions but most of them certainly sent in congratulatory letters. Often, they included such eminences of the times as Satyajit Ray, Alvin Toffler, Devika Rani, Bill Aitken and John Lawrence. I think the magazine was launched in January 1981 and was wound up sometime in the late 1990s. But, I must say, the magazine was a great read and a treat to the eyes for as long as it lasted. That is why even now I don’t have the heart to sell my copies off in raddi.

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