An overkill

Puja special editions aren’t what they used to be.

It’s early days yet but puja sankhya, or puja special editions of vernacular magazines, are already flooding the market. Traditionally brought out around Durga puja, these much-awaited annual magazines have also multiplied in number.

“Puja sankhya used to be an annual ritual for all book-lovers; it would bring to us the best stories and novels from our favourite authors,” recalls Bengali author Shirshendu Mukhopadhyay who is known for his contribution to children’s literature. “It used to be a possession that would be preserved in every Bengali household. The year-long wait would finally end with the first thick, soft bound black and white puja sakhya timed around a week before Durga puja. It would carry illustrative stories by Satyajit Ray, Premendra Mitra and Shibram Chakraborty,” he reminisces.

 

Desh, Bashumati, Jugantar, Nabakallol and Anandabazar Patrika brought out leading puja sankhyas during the ’60s and ’70s, many of which have now disappeared. Shuktara and Shishu Sathi were the only two magazines that brought out special children’s editions during puja. Competition was less and writers had enough time to churn out high-quality stories and novels in time for the special annual edition.

Today several Bengali publishing houses bring out monthly and fortnightly editions of vernacular magazines that have already released the puja sakhyas. Anandabazar Patrika publishes six puja sakhyas: Patrika, Desh, Sananda, Unish Kuri (for young adults), Anandalok and Anandamela. These editions include three to four novels, several short stories, poems, travelogues, entertainment, illustrations and so on. “Besides well-known writers, puja sakhyas is a launching pad for many upcoming writers,” says Harsh Dutta, editor of Desh which boasts of the highest sales among puja sankhyas. Justifying the change, he says, “Desh has a niche readership; there is pressure to meet the expectations of our readers. We certainly cannot ignore the competition.” Earlier, each copy would be proofread manually three times. Putting an edition together manually would take months. “We would often work overtime, till midnight, proof reading manuscripts of novels and stories so that we could wrap up the special edition a week before puja,” recalls writer Sanjib Chattopadhyay who was associated with Desh. Technology has put an end to that.

Mukhopadhyay rues that the present generation of writers is inspired by crime-related news. “There’s a growing tendency among new writers to write detective stories where the protagonist, a private detective, solves a crime mystery. But something like this has an adverse impact on the minds of children.”

Chattopadhyay is of the opinion that young writers mostly follow clichés and bring in sex and violence unnecessarily. He recalls a conversation with Satyajit Ray who told him that he was running out of stock because the characters of his novel, unlike those of younger writers, weren’t dealing with sex. Ray preferred to keep sex and violence out of his literary works. “There was an amazing sense of restraint among writers then, but the new generation is getting bolder because of the influence of the visual media and bringing the same obscenity into literature,” says Chattopadhyay.

“We do feel that there aren’t good enough writers to take over from veterans like Sunil Gangopadhyay, Samaresh Majumder, Sanjib Chattopadhyay and Shirshendu Mukhopadhyay,” says Arabinda Das Gupta, a book shop owner at the College Street market. “But we are hopeful that we will have good writers in the future. Despite the content crisis, there has been remarkable advancement in packaging and the covers are far more attractive today.” Thankfully, not everybody is judging these books merely by their cover.