Little magazines of Kolkata and Bengali magazine from Nashik

It is a well-known fact that Bengalis are poets at heart and they understand the intricacies of not only politics but also of football, cricket and the fine arts. They believe in the age-old maxim of ‘what Bengal thinks today, India thinks tomorrow’. As a result, they suffer from a sort of superiority complex and they will never admit it.
Anyway, when some Bengalis get together and they have a common bond of writing either poetry or prose, there would be an automatic desire to see their names in print. The Bengalis in Nashik were no different and, I was one of them.

I had already been writing in a few magazines of Kolkata and there was another gentleman who wrote poems – he had managed to get a footing of sorts in the little magazine sector. This little-mag sector was unique to Bengali culture and had been born to allow up and coming writers to try and secure a toehold in the highly competitive world or writing.
Believe it or not, there are established writers who had graduated from little magazines to big magazines and, finally, became big names in the literary world.
Incidentally, little magazines hold a special place in Bengali culture and, in the annual Book Fair held in Kolkata, a separate section is reserved for Little Mags.
Then there was an elderly woman, the wife of one of our colleagues, who was an established writer with a few books to her name. And, along with her, there were some more Bengalis who were poets or writers at heart.
Well – all these faithfuls of Bengali literary world decided to meet one evening every month and read out our literary creations and allow others to comment and criticize the outputs. (to be continued …)

A magazine Editor and his magic of creating a masterpiece

I had lunch with my new found friend and Editor of Mashik Rahasya and, as he cooked and later as we finished the meal, I was surprised to learn of the struggles he had to go through to set up the magazine. The odds were stacked up against him but he had that never-say-die attitude and he surmounted all obstacles.
I was impressed as he narrated his experiences and, after lunch and a bit of rest, I set out with him on his journey to the world of books and the world of writers and poets – namely, the Coffee House on College Street.
Coffee House was the meeting place for everyone who mattered in the world of those who worshipped creativity in any form – from writers to artists to people associated with the movies and the theater. There would be groups seated at the tables and arguing on any conceivable topic under the sun. They talked about their own works and heaped criticism on the works of others.
My Editor friend introduced me to a few of them and once they came to know that I was not from Kolkata, they heaved an unmistakable sigh of relief – they knew that living so far away from the city I could never become a competitor for them.
Anyway, after spending the afternoon in their company, we parted company and he requested me to create a new character specifically for his magazine – of course, he admitted that he could not afford to pay me any honorarium but assured that the exposure would benefit me in the long run. And thus was created the detective Nero Mullick – a retired officer of the Indian Railways. He had a devoted friend in the form of a police inspector and a loving daughter-in-law who gave them both company. (to be continued ... )


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