Why there’ll never be JS again

He was perhaps born in Allahabad in 1921 A different website casually mentions Patna Thatrsquos about the only thing Google could tell me about my first bossTherersquos not an awful lot out there about Desmond Doig He was a preInternet soul so yoursquod have to deduce who he was and what he was like from his writings sketches musings and anecdotes If yoursquore younger than 64 chances are you wouldnrsquot knowmdashor careAs a Gen Z or Millennial you might also not know or care about the brief meteoric rise and fall of the cultlike youth magazine Desmond Doig edited from 1967 to 1977 called simply JS The kicker always read The magazine that thinks youngI worked there as a Roving Reporter during its last five years right up to the morning it was summarily shut down no reasons given It was like working within a whirlwind in an office ablaze with psychedelic clouds and rainbows and skyblue partitions between work areas Great writing collegiate puns and serious journalism were applauded as much as April Fool jokes rock rsquonrsquo roll concerts and outright irreverenceI floated much like Brownian particle among wordsmiths like Jug Suraiya Shashi Tharoor and Bachi KarkariaGoing to work was always a daily thrill you never knew what awaited you Fun was taken seriously Frivolity music art and novelty were the mantras while politics and social ferment were to be left strictly to the capable pens of the senior Statesman newspaperThis editorial policy it seemed perfectly suited the young counterculture Indian of that time committed to making love with flowers rather than wars with guns while outrageously disguised in bell bottoms face paint and long hair Every issue of the magazine was eagerly awaited every word avidly read and sometimes remembered decades laterThe few copies extant today come with murderous price tags as collectorrsquos items on eBayThen I heard about Z definitely not his real name who worked for a period in the Mumbai offices of The Statesman and came upon 11 old bound volumes of JS As he began reading he came under the spell that had captivated an entire generationThe stories were eclectic full of curiosity engaging and global There were hitchhikers and rock rsquonrsquo rollers women mountaineers and taxi drivers who lifted weights with their hair Bollywood balladeers the Beatles painters and iconoclastic models colourful tearoff posters quips and caustic comments and serious sometimes whimsical investigationsConvinced that a treasure would be lost if every page of JS was not carefully archived Z was overcome by a sense of missionThe al Jazeera writer Chandni Doulatramani has written an absorbing account of how Z smuggled out issues volume by volume one at a time to get each page photocopied Back then xeroxing cost R20 a pagemdasha lakh rupees for almost 5000 pages Z could not afford this but his enthusiasm was infectious Persuaded that this was Godrsquos own work or at least an undertaking of national importance the photocopy shop agreed to just a rupee a page in addition to working extra hours every eveningIt took Z eight days to create a digital archive of almost all the JS issues available Therersquos a reason two volumes are missing from Zrsquos collectionmdashI had filched them from The Statesman office in Mumbai when the clerk was looking the other way I still have themThe remaining issues encoded as a zip file were donated by Z to a Kolkata university to be preserved in safe custody for posterityWas posterity even interested I wondered In the early 1990s C R Irani the man who had vindictively shut down JS got in touch with me Our last exchange had been brutal Irsquod quit the day they shut JS down writing in my resignation letter that I wanted no part in an institution ldquowhose ship and captain were drifting in opposite directionsrdquo Irani had responded instantly waiving the onemonth notice periodAvuncular and warm now he asked if I was interested in restarting JS as editor I asked for a minute to consider After a minute I said noA magazine like JS whose readers waited to hungrily eat up every word on every page has no place in a world of emojis disappearing messages and corporate influencers where reading is passeacute and reality competes with PhotoshopSidharth Bhatia author of India Psychedelic The Story of Rocking Generation says ldquoGen Z has moved online They donrsquot have time for a youth magazinerdquoWant proof Four years before JS in 1963 another youth magazine took shape in Allahabad Desmond Doigrsquos birth city Called The Teenager its founders were Italian expatriates Fr Maurus and Fr Rego Its goal to be ldquoa friend to thousands of Indian teens supporting them through their growing pains sharing laughs and being there through their joys and sorrowsrdquoThough JS closed down in 1977 The Teenager renamed Teenager Today is still published in print and online versions Itrsquos Indiarsquos oldest surviving youth magazine at 60 yearsNot one person I spoke with young or old male or female this generation or that has heard of itYou can reach C Y Gopinath at cygopigmailcomSend your feedback to mailbagmiddaycomThe views expressed in this column are the individualrsquos and donrsquot represent those of the paper