The Trouble With Magazines.

          “Why do you have so many magazines on the shelves?” Shri Husband asked.

“I’m going to read them,” I said.

“They’ve been there for at least a hundred years.” Shri Husband exaggerates, sometimes. He checked out one which had less dust and gingerly picked it up. “An in-flight magazine?” he asked. “Why are you preserving that?”

“I want to read it,” I mumbled.

“Where did you get it from?”

How did it matter to him? I thought.

I quietly replied: “My friends and relatives got them for me.”

“Why? To introduce you to glossy paper and great pictures?”

I thought, “to tempt me out of my humdrum existence.” But said nothing.

As if reading my mind, he said: “If they thought they’d get you to travel, it hasn’t worked because you haven’t got around to seeing more than the in-your-face advertisements. The articles are printed in small font. That might be intentional, to put readers to sleep. Meant to be read in-flight, remember? The letter from the Director/Editor is the only thing you can easily read, and that’s all about sectors, flights, fares, stuff that’ll make no sense to you.”

He was in one of his moods…’let’s see what I else I can lay my hands on’. I helped by pushing a non-glossy, serious-looking issue towards him. He fell for the bait. Sadly, that too was a travel magazine.

          He said: “All those reality-adventures on life size television screens and the printed word still reigns. You watch climbers desperately clawing rock-faces, see them being interviewed about how they did it, so what do you want these magazines for?”

 I said: “There’s still a joy in dwelling on their descriptions in the quiet comfort of an armchair. That’s how/why these magazines survive.”

Now the volume rose a bit: “Provided you read them, no? They’ve been sitting here untouched… see, even the pages haven’t been unstuck.” He began to explore other shelves. Ouch, I thought, trouble-time. Silly of me to have opened my mouth.

Someone had gifted me a subscription to a hospital-administration magazine. Either that office IT department hasn’t noticed a software glitch or some kind staff regularly continues that subscription, because with monotonous regularity I get copies month after month. The history of the Indian hospital industry (has it been declared an industry?) lies in those volumes.

“They’re precious,” I said.

“Then build a vault for them,” he retorted.

“Not that valuable,” I said.

“Except for the raddiwala,” he said.

In recent months, a dry-waste-gatherer has been making rounds of our colony and buying unwanted paper. (In developed countries, you have to pay fellows to take away the raddi. Strange custom, no?) Here, earlier, everyone used to dump their raddi in vacant plots and burn it in small piles. We’re getting civilized.

I transferred that bunch of magazines hastily to another shelf, just in case he got rid of them. I mean to read them some day.

Shri Husband can’t be fooled. He tracked them down instantly, and worse, found others tucked away thereabouts. There were magazines for women, sports’ lovers, automobile aficionados (the last two had nothing to do with me, feminism or no, those aren’t my areas of interest), animals and environment, humour (comics, actually), etc.

The current news and political commentary ones, according to Shri Husband, were out-dated and needed to be discarded immediately. I said, “It has details of events. Google doesn’t give you all information.”

Shri Husband: “It gives you enough. You’re not doing your PhD in anything.”

He picked up one stained and tattered copy of a publication on spiritual well-being. “See this,” he said. As if I hadn’t already.

“What’s there to see?” I asked.

“It’s gathering dust and mites, it deserves to be chucked.”

“There’s God’s photo on the cover, can’t chuck it.”

“God’s pictures are on every invitation card, do we keep those?”

Silence. Didn’t have the heart to tell him where I’d hidden that pile.

My silence bothers him. “Don’t tell me you’ve got old invites somewhere,” he guessed correctly, transferring his energy purposefully to make the shelves and drawers empty. He found volumes of fiction specials.

“Fiction doesn’t go out of fashion,” I told him. He shook his head, staring at one nearly defunct ‘literary review’ run by a young college girl with her pocket money. Grim expression followed; Shri Husband doesn’t believe in heart ruling head. Calls it ridiculous.

There were several exclamations of ‘what’s this’ at regular intervals.

Suddenly, that changed to “What. Is. This?” with every syllable stressed upon. I looked over his shoulder. It was a cookery magazine with some adorably appetizing dishes colourfully presented on every single page. All that work had made him hungry and the sight of food changed matters.

We have recipe books, watch cookery programs on television, discuss foods with friends and don’t part with food magazines.

We calmly, nostalgically browsed through them, saying ‘look’ and sighing every alternated second. We aren’t going to make or eat any of those things. Just desiring them is wonderful. Like the fashion, luxury and interior decoration magazines. Like Bollywood, they keep alive dreams and hopes. That’s the trouble with magazines. Easy to acquire, hard to get rid of.

I got up to rustle up a snack.

On our shelves…as things were, things remain.

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