I’VE worked at two city magazines, a national arts and culture magazine, and what promised to be an Indian Esquire. I’ve worked in one of the big English language magazine groups and also for a stand-alone title owned by one of India’s biggest industrial conglomerates.

I’ve been a magazine editor, off and on and through the grades – assistant to deputy to editor – for 16 years. That’s most of my working life. You’d think I know what makes a magazine be successful. But the truth is, I – and mostly everyone else I’ve ever met, regardless of what they may claim – don’t really have a clue.

Of course, this is a limited definition of success, in that it cites ‘commercial’ success, the sort that can be gauged in readership figures and advertising revenue and the like. The approbation of friends, awards from one’s peers, appreciation from strangers whose lives, so they said, were enriched by what you were pumping out: well, of course, those are lovely too. But, at the risk of offending my co-contributors in this volume, and indeed the wonderful publisher and editor of this journal itself, commercial success – specifically, readership – is in my view joined root and branch with any viable vision of magazine publishing.

I’ve never believed in preaching to the converted. That my friends and others who think like me – indeed, those who, if they knew me, would be my friends – enjoy and respect my work is simple, obvious, and self-fulfilling. But the whole point of the publications I worked for was to reach strangers, doubters, the larger world. Without reach, the mission collapses.

I’ve never worked for a truly ‘little’ magazine, in the sense of a journal that is impervious to the market. There is a space for publications like that, run by believers who labour over what they love, producing work for others such as them. I may end up at one; I’ve often fantasized about running such a creature from my computer, free from the overheads of staff, rent, paying for informational access. But the only publications I have any experience of actively solicited advertising, owned marketing budgets, and had plans in place to grow and expand.

Theoretically. Whether those plans worked or not is a story for a different day. But being in magazines that had a commercial aspect enabled me to grow in significant ways, and for that I remain grateful.

 

I learnt how to be in offices, for one thing. Working as a freelancer, or for a really small outfit, is no training for a journalist. You need human contact to learn the ropes. And staff takes money. In time, I learnt to manage offices, and the people that make them hum. Even my last gig, where I was managing a string of freelancers, required ego massaging, time keeping and gentle kicking skills that you don’t learn unless you’ve seen them being employed. You pick them up from good editors working to deadlines that have to be obeyed.

There is the question of standards. You learn editing on the job, working on copy that may be up to scratch, but more often isn’t. (I wish more places in this country, whether publishing books, papers, magazines, even postcards, actively edited text.) You develop a visual eye looking over the shoulder of your designers and photo editors and being sent back out into the field if what you’ve brought in isn’t good enough. You learn – or should learn – to reject what is voyeuristic and encourage what is true and revealing. You respect facts and seek them out and you come to identify a ‘cut and paste’ from Wikipedia or some other anonymous ‘source’ at a thousand yards. You carry a dictaphone to an interview. How hard is it?

I know what makes a good magazine, I think. Every editorial instinct I have leads me to state that a ‘good’ magazine is a successful one. But…

 

If you detect a note of pessimism, you’re probably right. Or at least realism, for it would seem that magazines have had their day. Among other things, let’s stroke the elephant in the room: the internet in general, more specifically the shortening of the ‘cycle’ and the concomitant tightening of our individual and collective attention spans. There’s no point grieving about it. Magazines had their moment, and what a moment it was. Writers, photographers, illustrators and sundry other contributors, all got their start and honed their arts at periodicals. Not just abroad; examine the honour roll here of authors and their patrons – The Illustrated Weekly, The India Magazine, Junior Statesman among others; the list goes on. (I’d like to think that the magazines I’ve been associated with these past 16 years have done their bit in helping the creative types along.)

But now the model must change. Many old hands – Naresh Fernandes at Scroll.in comes to mind, as does Siddharth Varadarajan at The Wire – have already moved to the internet, arguing with justification that their skills are just as valid there. Stories need to be thought through, issues discussed, fights fought: copy needs to be tightened, facts need to be checked, images need to be sourced. And length? Well, brevity was always under-appreciated anyway.

Others have moved to smaller magazines, some funded to be independent – may heaven bring us more such proprietors, like my last owner at The Indian Quarterly – while others are simply braver, and carry on regardless, like the excellent Caravan. Other friends and ex-colleagues struggle on at the old stands, trying to keep their heads above water, listening to demands from business types that wouldn’t have been entertained in the brave old days (or so the story goes). And when older hands meet, they bemoan the end of the era of the ‘Editor’. Now all we get is the lower case ‘e’.

I remember advising a young friend who was interested in bringing a new magazine to market. He asked me about editors, and who was suitable. I told him that what he needed, absolutely first on the list, was a good marketing person, who would understand the product (because the reverse is usually true). Then – and connectedly – a circulation person, because, well, reach (without which the mission collapses, etc). Then, a sales person, who would naturally – at least for the first couple of issues – bring his old clients along. Finally, when all that was in place, he could worry about editors. There’s no shortage of those.

 

Good editors, of course, are in markedly shorter supply. So, to right the mood, let me recognize the fine ones I’ve dealt with and learnt from during my time in magazines. I was just back from a trip to Vietnam, and had finished writing my first novel. I was at a loose end in Mumbai. 2000 was very, very new. I met Radhakrishnan Nair at a dinner, at a friend’s suggestion. We hit it off, he showed me his new magazine, Man’s World, and invited me to join as assistant editor. I wrote the next two cover stories (including one on the dotcom bubble, that’s how long ago it was).

From Radha and his then colleagues, Harsh Man Rai and Kai Friese, I learnt the value of having a good time on the job. Yes, it was a monthly, and we weren’t the best at hitting our deadlines. But we quickly garnered a loyal following, because we wrote long stories, carried stuff that appealed to our own eclectic range of interests, and didn’t presume to know more than we actually did.

As to what I learnt: there’s nothing like reading good magazines as an education. We read voraciously, from The New Yorker to Men’s Journal. (That’s another advantage of a properly funded office; you can order up a library.) I learnt the value of good ownership – in an ideal world committed enough to spend, unwilling to interfere; team-building – yet there’s always a place for a shared meal, drinks after work, a friendly Diwali gambling session; mentoring – I was lucky to find the three gents above, all of whom I’m privileged to still call friends; and also, finally, trust. I trusted my seniors to back me up, and they trusted me not to screw up. And when I did, it was part of the learning process.

And what stories I have of that place and my learning process. Back-packing through Arunachal Pradesh, meeting men who’d been convicted of spying by the Indian state, having a beer in the AM with ‘villain’ Ranjeet in his rooftop pool; naps in the sun at lunchtime overlooking Mahalaxmi racecourse, because I could.

 

It was a wonderful time at a wonderful place with wonderful people – the perfect first job in publishing. It couldn’t last, of course. Golden ages aren’t forever. In 2005, newly back in New Delhi, I joined up with Kai again to help set up Outlook City Limits. A city magazine, it was a short-lived experiment, because it never got any commercial traction. But ‘uncle’, aka Vinod Mehta, seemed to like the product, and we struck up one of those acquaintances where he always had a smile for me when we met, the sort of smile you know indicates that the other person can’t quite place who you are.

It was a super little magazine while it lasted. It aimed to engage with the city in a way that Delhi lacked, at the time. Reviews and listings on arts and culture; the same for food and entertainment, along with the sort of longer story that allowed people to look at their city with new eyes.

I enjoyed my time there, learning to engage with the stresses of a larger magazine group, coming across a bureaucratic language that was to dog my footsteps at my next stop. We had a nice, supportive team, who took their cue from Kai himself, a man of great charm and curiosity, endlessly interested in a great many things, one of which is Delhi itself. The team was in the main very forgiving of my playing sepak takraw in the office. (It was also stacked full of careful readers of copy, who helped tighten my own proofing skills.) Those good people helped me deal with the macho all-night production schedules, a legacy of the very male journo culture that existed then at Outlook – and is the bane, still, of much of Indian publishing. I hated those nights and that culture with a passion. It pushed me to organize myself better, which had a useful knock-on effect at my next port of call.

City Limits also brought me back to Delhi, the city I’d thought I’d escaped as a boy. As with many other people who had that difficult city in their rear view mirrors, I’d affected a ‘no, I’m not really from there’ attitude. But now I was dealing with it on a daily basis. That relationship was to deepen and acquire more layers at my next magazine.

 

Time Out Delhi happened, as all my gigs seem to, over a beer. The group that had started Naresh Fernandes’ excellent magazine, Time Out Mumbai, wanted an entry into the capital. He met me for lunch, and the deal was done. As an aside; I met my owner, Smiti Ruia, in her family’s home in Delhi, which had been my childhood home. It seemed fortuitous, at the time.

And so it proved. I got my own magazine without ever having had any ambitions in that direction. Again, people had trusted me to do something that I, in the same position, may have felt I was unready for. But in truth, I was ready.

I was ready to set up an office from scratch, buying chairs and computers, organizing networks, electronic and otherwise, doing all the little and big things that go into the founding of magazines. I was ready to go looking for a team, the assembling of which I still regard as my favourite memory of that time. I was ready to fall in love with Delhi again, something I’d thought impossible after 1984.

 

The time of setting up, in late 2006, was stressful. As with all big companies, the parent group wanted the product out and immaculate, immediately. Those first stresses never entirely eased, and they left their mark. I’m afraid to say they affected my relationships with the people that had hired me. They were far away, in Mumbai. Resolution wasn’t as easy as sitting down over a meal and threshing things out.

Knowing what I do, now, perhaps I would have handled that time differently. What I do remain is unequivocally grateful to them all – Naresh, Smiti and the rest – for trusting me with what is still most closely associated with me as an editor. Time Out Delhi brought me friendships I cherish, collaborations I would have been sunk without – including my ally, friend and now editor at HarperCollins, Ajitha G.S. – and an individual reputation for being a ‘good’ editor that is built entirely on shared achievement. I still believe it brought something new to Delhi, a way of looking at its triumphs and tribulations, its culture and its ways, that was all its own; new, even.

Mostly, it helped me put in action things I had learnt from other people. To trust others, especially those who felt they were unready. (‘I trust you implicitly’ is a tremendous spur to action. The listener doesn’t need to know that you’ve got a backup plan.) To listen carefully, to read carefully – for which a special shout to Naresh, who remains the best editor of copy in India – to let my colleagues run with things they’d suggested. And always, to put our subject, which was Delhi itself, first. And when a little discipline was required, to administer it gently.

That my own little family had grown to accommodate a son at the same time was serendipitous. It gave me perspective on many things; growing pains, for one. Also, what is important, and what really isn’t.

 

At the end of 2009, my relationship with the head office had deteriorated to nothing. I had personal issues as well, that needed my attention. I was sad to leave that office, but it was in good hands – Raghu Karnad, and later Sonal Shah and Jairaj Singh and the teams they assembled, did things with that magazine that I couldn’t have – and anyway I had other matters to take care of. My son was now walking and discovering the world. And I was to spend the best part of the next four years watching my mother die.

My mother passed away in October 2013. I, we, had had a lot of time to prepare. In that time, I’d started writing again, and had finished a novel about Delhi, a city Time Out Delhi had taught me to love again.

But my book was finished, as was the job of taking care of my mother. I was at a loose end, and then Madhu Jain appeared. As always, at a party. I’d met her before, knew of her, had friends in common. She knew my background, saw that I was at a loose end. She was running a quarterly, which is my favourite periodicity. It was about good writing – it carried fiction and poetry! – and focused on arts and culture. It was beautifully designed and produced and thus obviously well funded. She was easy to get along with. She needed a managing editor. And so I came to The Indian Quarterly.

 

In terms of immediately rewarding jobs, it’s hard to beat IQ. For one thing, it’s such a pleasure to be able to pay your contributors. To be working only with freelancers, most of whom you know, or are happy to get to know, is also fun, especially when you can give them long lead times. To curate an issue, as opposed to having to pump out ‘content’ because a deadline is due, is something every editor should be able to experience. Then, even though it’s owned by a larger group, there’s a refreshing lack of bureaucracy. Put it down to the culture Madhu has created, or the ownership culture I’ve already mentioned. Whatever the reason, it was a super place to work. As far as I’m concerned, it’s possibly the best gig in Indian magazine publishing. I only left because I had to, because I was leaving India.

But the things we were able to do at IQ will stay with me. The essays and interviews, the graphic stories, the extracts we ran and the short fiction we commissioned are memorable to me, as is the evolving beauty of the magazine itself and the way it pushes the cause of illustration. Then, its sharpening focus on new fiction and poetry, its growing slant towards providing a space for translation from Indian languages and others, the fact that it is continually looking for new voices and visual talent – all those things I will continue to point to with pride. That we managed to do it while we all stayed sane and happy, and indeed welcomed each other’s society, is wonderful as well.

Of course, that it is a freelancer-driven quarterly meant that it was new to me in some ways. Its structure – it doesn’t really have an office or staff – means that I wouldn’t suggest it to anyone starting out in publishing. But for us veterans, it’s a super place to end up. It is an expensive magazine to run, however, even without staff. I wonder how long the owners will stay committed. But, while they do, I can’t recommend it enough.

 

So. Man’s World, Radha’s labour of love, abides. Outlook City Limits and Time Out Delhi are no more. The Indian Quarterly will continue till it receives patronage, or the public decides that it is putting stuff out there that is worth paying for.

That last thing: that’s the last piece of the puzzle – how to convince your audience that all your effort in putting out a product worth reading by your own standards is worth their money. All that I’ve learnt in publishing doesn’t equip me to answer that question. But this I do know: Sharpening your own chops enough that you know what your standards should be takes time. You learn those on the job, from good people.

And also, this: Being a good person doesn’t make you a good editor. But it certainly helps. I’ve had the good fortune to meet and learn from good people. I don’t know if I’ve done enough to keep the chain going, but those that remember me fondly owe a debt, mostly unknowingly, to all those who came before me. I’d like to believe that I’m remembered fondly by mostly everyone I’ve ever worked with. I think that’s a measure of success that people tend to forget. It comforts me.

 

* Avtar Singh is the author of, among others, Necropolis, HarperCollins India, 2014.