Once upon a time, quite long ago before the digital mediums hadn’t entirely overwhelmed our senses, many of us were avid readers of ‘magazines’ (few also called tabloids) that carried invaluable information and the latest GK on variety of subjects. Those days, magazines were healthy looking & cheap too !
We are not talking about ones like ‘Stardust’ and ‘Sportsworld’ (which were attractive with glossy, in-the-face style) but of the informative, well-written stories, interesting interviews, reviews and exciting & funny pictures that were beautifully compiled in ‘Illustrated Weekly’ earlier and ‘India Today’ later. Sadly over time & business demands, the former disappeared and the latter became a thinner shadow of its former outspoken self ! These aside, there used to be many glossies that thronged book stalls just a few decades ago, but my loyalties remained with ‘Reader’s Digest’ (RD) since early days and till the giant digital-wave all but swept away the magazine industry.
RD was a smart, pocket size monthly that gave us a package of fascinating true stories, life lessons & views on a plethora of issues but what enthralled us who were veritable bookworms was that there were separate sections on ‘Word Power’ and ‘Quotable Quotes’ and many on snippets and anecdotes full of humour, wit & clever puns contributed by people from all over – like in ‘Laughter the Best Medicine’, “Humour in Uniform & ‘Life’s Like That’.. But in surviving challenges, RD lost a fair bit of it’s original charm and it’s new avatar looks emaciated (thin) and highly priced at Rs.100 which BTW is the standard price of any magazine today.
But a few days ago my eyes fell on RD’s April’ 24 issue with a small yellow sign “Special Collector’s Edition’ while browsing through a bookstore.
Even though slim, it is truly a reader’s delight as the RD team thoughtfully has brought together vintage and old articles from their much earlier issues in what they state as ‘Unforgettable Classics – Meet Iconic Figures from the Archives’. It includes wonderful biographies written decades ago on icons such as Marilyn Monroe, Agatha Christie, Sunil Dutt, Shahrukh Khan and Baba Ambedkar apart from all the fun segments that we’d spend hours on. Yesterday, I got so engrossed reading it in the flight that even the turbulence didn’t matter ! As one caption says ‘Catch It If You Can’ ! This is good old RD at its best !
Working on Living 