Grainy time machines: Vintage magazines offer windows into the past, and present - Hindustan Times
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Grainy time machines: Vintage magazines offer windows into the past, and present

ByCherylann Mollan
Dec 11, 2021 11:50 AM IST

Meet collectors with decades’ worth of issues on their hands. See why they collect as they do, and what it takes to preserve their ‘paper jewels’.

“Is your money safe in the bank?” asks the cover of one magazine. “The world is running out of water”, says another. A third promises vital tips in a cover story titled “How to look young, stay young, longer”.

A selection of covers dating from 1975 to 1995. Most of these headlines could have printed this week. That sense of stepping into a wormhole is part of what spurs magazine collectors, they say. PREMIUM
A selection of covers dating from 1975 to 1995. Most of these headlines could have printed this week. That sense of stepping into a wormhole is part of what spurs magazine collectors, they say.

These are covers from 1978, 1977 and 1975. The magazines are Sunday by Anandabazar publications, The Illustrated Weekly of India and a special issue of Femina respectively.

The images are a little grainy. The layouts are simple and sparse. There’s a retro feel to the fashions on display. But the overlap between past and present is eerie. The headlines could all have been printed last week. That sense of stepping into a wormhole is partly what spurs most magazine collectors.

Unlike most collectibles, magazines offer a window into the past that feels urgent, still-alive. They also offer the strange sense of deja-vu that comes from news recurring in a loop.

It is this sense of uncanniness that drives Naresh Dudani, 65, to keep adding to his collection. The retired journalist from Ahmedabad owns about 25,000 magazines and spends about two hours a day looking for editions he doesn’t have. An issue can cost up to 1,000. The lower the cover price, the older the issue, and the more it’s worth. Some of those he’s paid hundreds for, from the 1950s and ’60s, originally cost 35 paise per issue.

Dudani’s collection includes years’ worth of issues of some of India’s most popular magazines of yore: Sarika, Dharmyug, Sportsweek, Eve’s Weekly. The oldest magazine in his collection is a pre-Independence 1941 edition of Illustrated Weekly. The cover story is on the Royal Indian Navy and the cover bears a photograph of naval officers looking through a telescope.

Naresh Dudani’s collection includes stacks of issues of popular magazines of yore such as Sarika, Dharmyug, Sportsweek and Eve’s Weekly.
Naresh Dudani’s collection includes stacks of issues of popular magazines of yore such as Sarika, Dharmyug, Sportsweek and Eve’s Weekly.

Dudani shares snapshots of these old magazines on Facebook and on his Instagram handle, @madaboutmags. He delights in sharing old covers that reference current events. When Kabul fell to the Taliban, Dudani posted a 2001 India Today cover celebrating the militant organisation’s exit from Kabul. When Kangana Ranaut made headlines for her controversial statement on India’s freedom struggle, Dudani uploaded an image of the actor on the cover of a 2007 edition of Stardust.

“The way the news is presented has changed, but the problems have largely stayed the same,” Dudani says.

Even the ads mirror today’s, in many ways. On Deepak Rao’s Instagram account, @deepakrao49, the Mumbai Police historian relives the past through vintage advertisements from once-popular magazines such as Bombay: The City Magazine or Gentleman.

One ad announces that callers can make a phone call for one anna; another showcases a movie (tickets cost three rupees). It’s interesting, Rao says, how they have the same language and promises that characterise today’s TV advertisements.

Where Rao plans to sell his collection to international collectors, “as this is the only way the prized paper jewels will be respected and preserved”, in what is a rare move among magazine collectors, Nikhil Prasad Ojha has digitised his collection of clippings.

The collection is unusual too: it’s a range of articles from a whole decade of Illustrated Weekly magazines. Ojha began cutting out and collecting articles he liked from this magazine when he was in school. Between 1982 and ’92, he collected clippings of quizzes; features on sports, politics, art and culture and entertainment; poems; short stories; personal essays.

Now 50 and a partner at management consultancy Bain & Company, Ojha uploads snapshots to his Twitter account, @npojha. Among these are rare gems such as a poem titled For Fatima by Iranian political and religious leader Ayatollah Khomeini and a short story by actor Anupam Kher about an old friend from drama school, both published in 1989; a quiz on Sunil Gavaskar published in 1987; a photograph of wrestler (and later politician) Dara Singh reading Karl Marx, published in 1988.

“When I re-read articles from my collection, it feels like though the actors have changed, the themes remain the same,” Ojha says. “The one thing that stands out is that in any given era, journalism can speak truth to power, and that it becomes richer by making space for contrasting ideas and interests.”

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