Diary

Over 30 years ago, when I joined the weekly Sunday as a reporter, everyone around me said it was a big mistake. 'The age of magazines is over' was the chorus. Sunday Magazine did close down for various reasons but the age of magazines was not over. Evidently, it still isn't as this special issue of '30 Years of Outlook' proves. There is something exciting, unpredictable and complete about a magazine. The thrill of sitting down with a new edition of a magazine, holding the cover to the light to examine its design, opening the first pages, to look at the contents to savour what's inside, then to flip the pages to give a look-see at the various stories and articles, stopping at some stunning photograph or an illustration, and then finally zeroing in on which article to start reading from is a unique experience.

- Satish Padmanabhan

Always and Forever

It offers a sense of liberation; the editors may have curated the magazine carefully, going from serious stuff to the back-of-the-book stories, keeping similar themes stacked together, breaking it between reportage and opinion pieces, but the reader is free to read from wherever she wishes, even begin to read from back-to-front. A magazine has a great user-experience, it doesn’t need charging, the batteries never die, it doesn’t hurt the eyes (though it can sometimes make the head spin), easy to scroll up or down, doesn’t have crawlies, and can be switched off whenever one wants.

Magazine Junkies

Most readers of my generation would be magazine junkies, as there was nothing much else in way of education or entertainment while growing up. They would remember as children the eagerness with which they would await the next issue of a Chandamama or a Champak, or later