For the Pictures... & the Articles

© 𝕾𝖆𝖙𝖎𝖘𝖍 𝕮𝖍𝖆𝖓𝖉𝖗𝖆

 

With the demise of the print edition of Nat Geo, another childhood foundational brick crumbles into dust. 

Not unlike many members of our generation, I grew up around print media. There was the daily regional newspaper (something called The Indian Nation from Patna, no longer around) and a national broadsheet (The Statesman) from Calcutta (it was not yet Kolkatā), delivered a day late to my hometown. One of my earliest memories of these two broadsheets is from a summer evening, crisp newsprint delivered to our home by our khabar kāgaz wāllā, known to all as Jha ji . He was a smallish person with a toothbrush mustache and a salt'n'pepper stubble on his chin to match his hair. He always wore a half sweater no matter what the weather with a woolen muffler to protect his neck during monsoons and a jacket during winters. I had asked him once about his attire and he stated that there were always many menacing mysterious bugs lurking in the air ready to pounce on the unsuspecting masses; it was his sacred duty to ensure our newspaper delivery was not disrupted due to his ill-health. His beliefs were firm, and he conveyed them with utter conviction. For a long time after that, I had recurring nightmares about these invisible menacing bugs in the air chasing me during my normal daily pursuits. Terror, fright, etc. don't quite capture my feelings at this stage. Perhaps the Urdu word dahshat comes close. 

Jha ji rode an ancient looking bicycle that made wheezy, cranky noises and announced his presence liberally punctuated with a shrill little dome-shaped steel bell. There was an impressive number of newspapers and magazines tied in neat bundles in place of the front basket of the handlebar, on the back carrier, and more bulging but well-balanced bundles on the connecting tube. Whether by design or not, he announced his arrival by his trilling bell, which used to rouse every household on the street from their mid-afternoon snooze, serving as a wake-up call as the evening activities commenced lazily. 

My buddy Babul's dadu got a Bengali language paper (Ananda Bazar Patrika) and another English language daily (Amrita Bazar Patrika, I think). Often, not satisfied by the coverage of some momentous world-changing events in their own papers, the adults exchanged the papers with neighbors to read the other coverage, with myself and Babul as couriers. In between, Babul and I puzzled over the interest in our households over bizarre behaviors and pictures of celebrities in distant lands (in those days, pretty much any place outside of our hometown). We wondered why the rest of the gibberish on multiple pages even existed as we pored over the previous day's scores of county cricket, Ranji trophy, test matches, the only relevant and useful content. 

The one tabletop radio set in our household during the early days was under the strict control of my father and mostly used to listen to various news bulletins from AIR (two of three stations that it received with clarity). The rest of dial were full of buzz, beep, static, and occasional yeh radio Peking hai repeated multiple times. The only other station that it received with any clarity was the BBC (chimes of Big Ben, the five short pips with a sixth longer one prior to the news remain vivid in my mind!). 

As we grew older and bolder (defiance and rebellion to parental authorities was so innocent then) we started tuning it to other variety programs like Vividh Bhārati ... when dad wasn't around, with full complicity of my mom, who was perhaps as sick of my dad's "news only" dictum as the rest of us. Next-door neighbors had a newer tabletop model that received Radio Ceylon (before it became Srilanka Broadcasting Corporation's videsh vyāpar vibhāg) clearly. Babul's dadu had a less-than-iron grip on the usage of their radio, and they blasted the Hindi cinema (before it became, ugh, Bollywood) songs (Bināca geet mālā) loud enough for both households. Oh, those catchy jingles about Tinopal, Lux soap and some cough medicine (Daddy has a frightful cold, dear dear me!)

Besides all this, there were two magazines that were deemed acceptable to the adults. One, of course, was Reader's Digest - Indian edition. The RD articles were short and bland except for the condensed book section, which was long and bland. The filler jokes at the end of the articles were decent - some even clever. Life's Like That, Humor in Uniform, All In a Day's Work, etc. were devoured eagerly. Adults pored over the I am Joe or Jane's Heart/Lung/Kidneys, etc. articles and discussed them in their get togethers for some reasons unfathomable to us in those days. We also had access to the US edition for a while brought over by a family friend during their annual trek to India. It had glossier paper, a fresher and more pleasant smell. The jokes seemed crisper with local references and puns, unfamiliar usage and strange spellings. The humor section was called Life in these United States. I'm not sure if RD is still as popular in India as much as it was on its heyday. I feel that it was an aspirational magazine for many Indian homes in those days, devoid of current in-your-face content of some others... I have not picked one up in donkey's years. 

The other mag was National Geographic. Many households had decades old copies of earlier editions from way back when. I vaguely recall yellowing piles of Nat Geo in a store room at my grandparents' house under thick layers of dust. There, they lay along with bundles of old Life magazine. While a lot of this type of material was disposed off regularly when the local raddi wāllā made his usual rounds, those piles were sacrosanct and not to be touched while my grandmother was alive, still ruling the roost with an iron fist. I remember the glossy pictures of Nat Geo (which our family continued to subscribe for a bit) with fascination. Babul and I tried to figure out strange landscapes, colorful clothing, and other assorted things that were beyond our comprehension. The captions and the articles just seemed to go "whoosh" with our extremely limited vocabularies or worldviews. However, I must admit that Nat Geo was the very first time either of us actually saw pictures of adults and children from distant lands in their native attire or... the lack thereof. The majestic mountains, lush landscapes, glistening glaciers, erupting volcanoes, birds with wild plumage, snarling, ferocious beasts were all there a plenty but I don't recall them as much as I clearly recall those scantily clad, topless forms in their natural habitats, going about their daily lives as captured by legendary Nat Geo photo journalists. We wondered if the mothers of those humans pictured in Nat Geo said anything to them about decorum, tradition, society, civilization, acceptance, etc. No females or even males around us could ever dream of stepping outside with an extra millimeter of skin exposed unnecessarily. Alas, the youngsters of the future generations would not get this opportunity to experience the wide-eyed wonder of our generation from the physical feel of Nat Geo anymore. 

A third rag got added to this list somewhat later after I had left the safety, security and comfort of my sheltered existence and joined a bunch of other strangers in that strange land, one that we now call IIT Kgp. Briefly, my introduction to this third magazine would not have met the approval of any of the adults in my life. However, seniors at Nehru Hall D-top quickly discovered the breadth and depth of my ignorance. A couple of the seniors took it upon themselves to broaden my horizons with a glossy magazine filled with pictures... and articles. However, during the first month of... ice-breakers (😉), I was handed a somewhat dog-eared publication that had apparently been circulated widely and had many missing pages. I was sent to a corner in the room and asked to read some article and summarize the contents for the seniors. Others were given other similar educational tasks depending on their levels of incompetence. I apparently passed the test when I reported back that I had not read the article as I could not get past the centerfold. It provoked much laughter and brought me some stress relief that evening. Alas, apparently, that magazine too has ceased to exist in print form.

So to all friends, please get off that smart dumbphone this weekend and find a good magazine or two to read this summer. For the pictures... and the articles. 

© 𝕾𝖆𝖙𝖎𝖘𝖍 𝕮𝖍𝖆𝖓𝖉𝖗𝖆