Madras miscellany

A tale of one journal...

THIS is a tale of two journals, one a story of disappointed hopes, the other a story that's just beginning with, like the first, much hope and which might yet kindle in the former hope again.

As I write these lines on the first tale, the Indian Review of Books would have almost completed ten years, but it also looks like it might not celebrate its tenth birthday. There is every chance of its August issue being its last - unless a miracle happens, as in the case of Madras Musings, and friends and wellwishers step in to keep going what in its sheer universal readability makes it the best book review journal in the country.

Published by K. S. and Chandra Padmanabhan of EastWest Books, IRB has struggled along these past ten years with some help from wellwishers, some support from less than a handful of publishers, and considerable subsidy from EastWest. But with regular support lacking from the scores of English language publishers in the country - who make India rank Third in English language publishing - IRB has been tottering for a while now and unless there's immediate help, we'll, in a few days, be seeing the last of this monthly.

IRB may not have been a well distributed journal, but it certainly had a subscriber list which included every State in the Union and many a country abroad. As S. Krishnan, its Consultant Editor, once wrote, its contributions came "from all parts of the country, from high officials in foreign and Government service, as well as from the Armed Force, from retired ambassadors, distinguished editors and journalists, eminent academics, and art critics. It is not mere vanity when we say that one can make a reasonable list of the country's intellectual elite from its list of reviewers." To which I should add, they wrote in a language which not only made reading a pleasure but for the most part communicated with the widest possible general readership. It was not a journal written by eggheads for fellow eggheads; it was a journal where knowledgeable reviewers provided information and analysis about what the books contained in order to get a wide spectrum of readers interested in the books and make them want to read them. And that to me, has always been the essence of good reviewing. IRB did this very well - keeping a promise it had made in its first issue.

"Are we aborning, like Chesterton's donkey, at some moment when the moon is blood?" IRB had wondered in its first issue. But despite the RBI's policy crippling the import of books at the time, IRB felt it had a future: "We believe such a review has a definite role to play, a small one perhaps to begin with, in bringing book and reader together..." "More importantly," IRB went on, "book publishing in India has certainly come of age, with publishers going beyond traditionally self-imposed boundaries, and opening their lists to everything... In fact, there's God plenty... Let us find such books together." And since then, that's exactly what IRB and its few thousand subscribers have done together. But no more does IRB find it possible to keep that early promise, "We will endure, overcome and prevail". It will be able to do it only if the age of miracles is still not over. And there's a kind godfather or a fairy godmother out there somewhere.

Way back in the 1970s, a group of youngsters came together to form the Srinivas Young Men's Association in Triplicane. Through exemplary social service, they have created a legacy for the next generation to nurture and uphold.

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... and a tale of another

MY SECOND tale is about a new journal called Consumer's Digest, described as "Your guide to consumer awareness". That in format and style it is a close of Reader's Digest is only to be expected, for its publisher was once known best as 'Reader's Digest' Desikan, its Editor is Nirmala, who quit being the Reader's Digest's Girl Friday to become his wife, and in charge of circulation is B. S. Madhavan, once Reader's Digest's southern Regional Manager. When the Desikans left the Reader's Digest to settle down in Madras, they founded and Nirmala edited two excellent niche magazines - Indian Needlewoman and Indian Cookery. Sadly, they decided to make them one and a more generalised one at that, Indian Housewife, but moving away from niches meant competition that could not be sustained. Its Tamil edition, Mangaiyar Malar, however, became a success in other hands.

Explaining the genesis of his recently formed Consumers Association of India, which publishes the new journal, Desikan relates how he got interested in the consumer movement 25 years ago. On the day he took delivery of a new car, he placed his palm on its roof while getting in and wound up with a bleeding finger caused by a crude bit of welding. Berating the showroom manager on the poor quality of manufacture, he was shocked to hear the manager say, "You're a lucky man, Sir. You're lucky that's the only defect." In fact, Desikan was to find about 25 more defects in the car over time - and that's when he thought it was time the Indian consumer began to fight back.

His South Madras News, perhaps the country's first free neighbourhood newspaper, was his first voice. Out of it was born the SMN Consumer Protection Council, which filed a record number of cases in Consumer Forums. The Council led to the formation of FEDCOT (The Federation of Consumer Organisations of Tamil Nadu and Pondicherry). Moving on from FEDCOT, now just one of the country's 3,000 consumer organisations and one of the 1,350 from amongst them registered with the Government of India, Desikan has committed himself to a new aspect of the consumer movement: to make the consumer aware and, in turn, make the consumer's voice heard loud and clear. Consumer's Digest, born of the background of the team behind it, is the medium.

The message in the first issue includes features on the Rights of Consumers, Petrol Adulteration, Safer Buildings, Packaged Food, a Product Buying Guide, Deceptive Advertising, Case Studies on deficiency of service in transportation and the student as a consumer vis-a-vis an educational institution. But best of all, in Reader's Digest style, Consumer's Digest is replete with those little 'tale-enders' laced with humour, human interest and advice from round the world. Like, for instance, the woman in America who called an airline's answering number and said, "I want to go from here to Ahmedabad" and was asked, "Ma'am, where are you calling from?" to which the exasperated reply was "My kitchen, of course!" Consumer's Digest is published from 2/380, 1st Main Road, AGS Colony, Kottivakkam, Chennai-600041 and can be contacted on e-mail at consumerassnofindia@vsnl.net.

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Well met, in and around town

FROM TIME to time, I hope to briefly introduce to readers of this column a few people I bump into in and around town and who've certainly made me say, "Well met".

In the last couple of weeks, they've included John Dean, a director of Bush Boake Allen (India), the flavours and aromatics people, whose name he helped to forge many decades ago when he presided over the merger of Bush of Nellikuppam and Boake, Allen of St. Thomas' Mount. He may be a less active biochemist than in those years, but he continues to be a regular visitor to India, now godfathering a pioneering project, the cultivation of vanilla in the High Range on Parry Agro properties. It's taken a decade, but the fruits of the effort are now being seen in several tonns of exports. Satisfying as that may be, what Dean remembers best is his first visit to Madras. It was in 1944, and as one of the few radar specialists around at the time, he was on his way to Colombo from Britain. Arriving in Madras late one evening, he was advised to find his way to the Connemara which was playing temporary wartime home to British servicemen. The Connemara however, was packed to capacity and Dean and his two colleagues were invited to spend their first night in Madras sleeping on its lawn! Returning to the hotel time and again over the years, he was there in 1994 and, on narrating his first experience, was guest of honour at a 'golden jubilee' party the hotel threw, "a gesture I have not forgotten" Dean concluded.

More regretfully met was Mark Larsen, the head of the American Information Resource Centre, Madras, for he was bidding farewell to the city. At a small party one recent evening, he was presented with a beautifully carved motorcycle of wood, replete with rotating wheels and moving chain drive. "It's a Harley Davidson, I hope you recognise," he smiled, even as he was enchanted by the exquisite bit of Indonesian handiwork. The smile was because throughout his stay in Madras it was an Enfield Bullet that Larsen rode all about town and to work when he was not striding or jogging faster than anyone else in the Boat Club area. If all that was making himself comfortable in Madras, he was even more comfortable on the highways, recalled a colleague that evening. He'd stop at any tea stall along the way, have a bite and stand watching life go by as he slowly sipped a cup of steaming tea and puffed a cigarette, while all the kids in the neighbourhood would gather around him and stare at this tall and lanky vellaikaran with a wispy beard completely at home in India's back of beyond. The Bullet, not being equipped like its export model, has had to sadly be left behind.

Two others well met were both self-taught artists whose full-time professions were worlds apart from their part-time passion - and both were met at exhibitions of what was, coincidentally, ink and line work. J. Prabhakar, who moved from embellishing his notebooks in a village school to doodling at his desk at Ashok Leyland's in Ennore, taught himself along the way to become a part-time artist and a successful one at that. The influence of Silpi and perhaps even the engineering atmosphere of Ashok Leyland's have resulted in line drawings of great precision and greater detail, as was to be seen in his latest exhibition focussing on Tiruvanmiyur's Marundeeswarar Temple. I couldn't, however, help but notice that while his sketch of the temple tank was a beauty, the tank in reality is in a state far removed from what that fine-nibbed pen has wrought.

Another who has made a success of being a dedicated part-time artist is A. V. Ilango, who, believe it or not, teaches Mathematics in, of all places, Madras Medical College. Despite his Mathematics background, Ilango's ink drawings have a free flowing Impressionistic quality about them that uncannily creates a sense of movement.

His exhibition (till August 10 at The Forum Art Gallery, Plaze Centre, on G.N. Chetty Road near the flyover) features many of his 100 drawings that illustrate the five-volume English translation of Kalki's Ponniyin Selvan by Karthik Narayan and published as part of Macmillan's translation project that was edited by Mini Krishnan and godmothered by the MR.AR. Trust. Ilango, getting into the spirit of the times, did his drawings with sharpened broomsticks, but fleshed a few of them out for the exhibition as sombre-coloured paintings - though the teaming of particular pictures in both mediums was not the happiest of presentations, I felt.

S. Muthiah

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