Since my father had a good aesthetic sense, sometime he would point out errors in proportions or sciography in those images or even draw the corrected images for us. I remember ‘studying’ those images minutely and passing judgments too. My appetite was so much that I would read every single line right from the editorial info, index, each and every advertisement to the artist’s name on the displayed images! Thus from a very early age, I learnt to identify those artists and their styles. To me everything about this magazine was attractive whether it was the layout, stories laden with moral values, colourful paintings, the foreign story section or ‘give a suitable title’ challenge. It may appear silly now but back then it was a fierce competition for one-upmanship a do or die situation! We would wait endlessly on the expected day of magazine delivery and whoever got it first would then sneak into some remote corner and try reading up as much as possible before the other caught up! Many times, our parents would intervene between the warring sisters and give us the magazine turn by turn so that each would read only one story at a time or they would ask us to complete a task to earn our rights to read the magazine first.
My elder sister was just a year and a half older to me we would often squabble to have the first right to glance through the magazine and also to catch up with the serial stories, especially, Vikram and Betal. I still remember some of those stories along with their title and layout even now! We read them repeatedly without losing even a bit of interest. At home, we had a good collection of Chandamama magazines.
After dinner, while enjoying the cool breeze, my father or paternal granny would regale us with mythological stories or share some anecdotes!ĭuring those aimless days, we used to collect Chandamama, Sudha and the other storybooks, and religiously settle in a cosy nook of our large house or the shaded area in the compound (with some snacks) it used to be real bliss to enter the world of kings, queens, Panchatantra and other stories.
On some hot nights, we would spread mats outside our house. Meeting cousins meant an exchange of some story books, relate stories we had heard from our elders, play Antakshari or some simple games. On those days our ears used to stay piqued for the Ice-candy vendor’s cycle bell! Ah! How we loved that sound!) Once a fortnight we would visit some relative, sometimes we would spend a few days at their place too, or they would visit us. I remember buying a bunch of coriander greens for 2 paise, a couple of lemons for 5 paise or the common salt for 3 paise! In those days everything seemed so cheap an ice-candy by a vendor on his bicycle would cost just 3 or 5 paise! Only once in a couple of days, Amma would allow us to buy ice candy. We enjoyed every act that we did right from watching movies twice or even thrice at the local ‘tent / touring talkies’ to running errands to buy the daily essentials like the coriander leaves or lemons! (Since we didn’t have refrigerators then, only small quantities of these perishables would be bought at any given time.
Our days used to be very relaxed and unstructured unlike that of today’s children. I recall the days when we lived in our own lovely and imaginative world. Our days and nights revolved around the stories, pictures and the puzzles section. As a little girl, I had started reading pretty early our family had subscribed to this magazine. In the pre-television era, it was a wholesome entertainment cum educative magazine for children.