In the familiar world of Print media lovers

Here, I am among friends. 

Given the Print media situation in the US today, anyone would easily think that it’s heyday is all but over. In the US would be easy to believe that it really and truly is dead, and that the internet is the Media King of the world today. 

However, in reality nothing could be further from the truth. Not in many other parts of the world, even in countries where literacy is not so high, the hungry reader population more than makes up for its non reading citizens. 

One very huge difference between the US and countries like India, Australia, all of the UK, Belgium, Netherlands, Germany, (probably other countries in Europe) Hong Kong, and Singapore, and maybe other countries I do not know about, is the prominent prevalence of Print Media. Even today. Even the Sunday editions of newspapers have thick weekend magazines. More on newspapers later. 

What provoked this piece was that Waitrose, a grocery store in the UK, produced TWO Store magazines this month, one for the month of January, 102 pages, excluding the cover, and another for the year 2022, 98 pages excluding the cover. The December issue of Waitrose, included a lovely print calendar. In fact I had last year’s too. 

The magazines are exceptionally high quality, with lots of colored pages and very interesting reading materials. There are very, very, very few advertisement pages. I know Tesco has a magazine too, and it’s just as good, and perhaps has more pages. I love that they’re popular and engage their readers, obvious by the readers letters they print, and other features. 

As a latch-key kid for some years in my life, I was supplied with a rich diet of reading materials of all kinds. My mother in her wisdom thought that would keep me out of trouble. It was perhaps also because she grew up amongst ink and paper. 

My maternal grandparents were publishers and printers in pre partition Lahore. They owned and published newspapers and magazines, besides books, including educational text books. They had the ‘largest quota of paper’ in Lahore, and even supplied to other publishers and printers. In fact, they lived on Nesbit Road, which is today recognized as Publisher’s Row in Lahore. My grandparents also owned a school.

When partition happened and they came to India, my mothers family again established a school. The elder four of five children, all had their Master’s degrees from Lahore. My aunt and grandfather, who was also a successful writer, ran the school. My mother got a job in the Ministry of Defense from a quota reserved for ‘20 highly qualified displaced persons.’ She taught an early morning class at the school, then rode her ‘Raleigh bicycle’, (again to quote my mother) to give English speaking tuitions to the wife of a very senior bureaucrat, before going to work in the Ministry. 

Knowing my mother’s personality and temperament, I am pretty sure she viewed this demanding routine as a welcome adventure, uprooted as the family were from all that was familiar to them. They were making a life, and memories all over again, possibly eager to replace what they had seen and endured in the madness and mayhem of Partition. 

With the school bringing in an income and offering some semblance of stability, the brothers, with content inputs from my grandfather, started the publishing business again. They were soon publishing newspapers, magazines, textbooks, novels, and books on general topics of current interest, and some books were mail ordered by readers in England. 

With the very handsome royalties coming from A.H. Wheeler and sons for product already sent to them before partition, especially for books written by my grandfather; they established themselves in New Delhi quite well, and within seven years had purchased a bungalow in an upmarket area in the vicinity of Connaught Place, and by the time I was two years old, my grandfather had a huge Chevrolet car, one of only two personal cars on the street. So one can understand my mother’s reverence for the printed word. She herself remained an avid reader all her life.

Their school became so successful, and with a large student population, that the Municipal Corporation, with its education department in its infancy, happily took it over. My Aunt remained the Principal, and the school thrived under her leadership. She was soon promoted and became an Inspectress of 33 schools in the district. By the time she retired, she was Senior Inspectress. Education was a big deal in our house. Books and magazines were permanent residents. 

In my garage at home, on numerous shelves sit scores of thick issues of Art in America, Fast Company, National Geographic, and others, including women’s magazines such as Real Simple, issues of First magazine, several Women’s Own, and others. An altar of sorts to the ink that nurtured my dear mother and her family.

Inside the house, in boxes a few still unopened from Australia are copies of the Good Weekend, the weekend magazine included in the seriously heavy multi sectioned issues of the Sydney Morning Herald, and several copies of the Australian Women’s weekly. I’ve saved these because the reading material is of such a superior quality, that some essays were worthy of being included in books. 

In my mother’s house, there would be copies saved of The Illustrated Weekly, Femina, Chanda Mama and lots of comics, books and other magazines. Amongst newspapers would be The Times of India, Indian Express, sometimes copies of the Khaleej Times, The South China Morning Post, The Straits Times, which was still the same thick newspaper when I last visited Singapore in November 2016. I remember Trump being announced winner in Narita, where we were transiting. 

In contrast, our local Orlando Sentinel has become an emaciated relic, with poor quality ink and paper. It makes me sad to see it. It used to be a good newspaper. It still is, with some good writers and publishing opinion pieces. I am glad it is still holding on to its reader base and hanging in, riding out what I hope is just a phase, and that readership of the printed word will rebound, that bookshops will return, and that school children will embrace books instead of tablets.

It’s interesting to note that India, Australia, Hong Kong, Singapore, all have colonial pasts, and the Middle East has a majority of the population from these countries. The quality of the content of these newspapers is intellectually stimulating, and intelligently informative. 

While I have reluctantly recycled several magazines, many copies still remain as reminders of the halcyon days when the printed word was respected, and the digital word still in its infancy. Who knew it would grow so ruthlessly and devour paper so hungrily and angrily, that it would the printed word shrink away in obsolescence. 

In Bombay, where I did not have the freedom to indulge in newspapers and magazines, I had found a Raddiwala shop in Mahim, who had a good supply of foreign magazines and I used to buy the English Women’s weekly from him for 25 paise an issue! I would never have thought then, that 35 years later I would be smiling and grinning happily writing about him. I even heard myself laugh out loud. 

There is an interesting story connected with the English Women’s Weekly, which I must write about another time. I’m not even sure anyone is intrinsically such stuff these days. 

Such is life. We never know what will bring us joy later in life. This is a precious memory, and this is not the first time that I’m thinking about a Bombay raddiwala and reminiscing happily about his shop. 

For all of these memories, and for the exposure to all the newspapers and magazines of the world, I am grateful.

Veenu Banga

01/06/2022.

Updated 01/07/2022.

1:12 am