Earlier this month we took a trip to Ahmedabad, where we met with veteran pulp authors H.N. Golibar, Bansidhar Shukla, and Ekta Doshi, all of whom will be featured in our Gujarati Pulp Fiction anthology, scheduled for December.
The highlight for us was learning about the history of the Gujarati magazine and pop culture institution Chakram Chandan--founded as "Chakram" in 1949 by N.J.Golibar, a member of Ahmedabad's Kutchi Memon Muslim community. Before getting into publishing, the senior Golibar began his career selling sweets known as "Goli"; he got his name from his hawker cry, "Ek anna, goli bar" (12 golis for 1 anna).
When N.J. died in 1966, his son H.N.Golibar took over the magazine--at the tender age of 15 (!)--managing operations while he was still in school. In 1970, after finishing his studies, H.N.Golibar added "Chandan" to the magazine's title, and soon started serialising his own science fiction and supernatural thriller novels in the pages, earning the nickname "Atom".
In 1976, a colleague told him that a weekly magazine could never survive without selling space for advertisements. Golibar took it as a challenge--he stopped running ads and kept Chakram Chandan completely ad-free for another 45 years. (Remember: not monthly, but weekly!!!)
At its zenith, during the serialisation of Golibar's bestselling supernatural thriller Jantar Mantar, the magazine had a circulation of 1,25,000 copies. Chakram Chandan was especially popular in Bombay, where it was championed by Golibar's close friend Abid Surti, creator of the Hindi comic superhero Bahadur. Special orders of the magazine came in from as far away as Khartoum, Sudan, where 30 or so Gujarati families used to congregate in the community hall at the Indian embassy for a group read.
Golibar told us a story about how in the early 1990s, he took a break from the magazine to go to Arabia on Hajj. In preparation for his leave, he speed-wrote a few weeks' worth of chapters for the novel that was currently being serialised. So attuned were his readers that they immediately noticed the rushed work and difference in style, and the magazine was met with a flood of complaints!
Magazine production was largely a family affair, involving H.N.Golibar's cousin Aslam Memon (who contributed a weekly ghost story), his son Mohsin Golibar (who wrote a science news column), and his wife Nazma Yunus Golibar, who wrote under the nickname Fatakadi ("Firecracker").
One of my personal favourite bits is Atom & Fatakadi's weekly Q&A column, which always features a cartoon of Fatakadi beating her husband up, often with a rolling pin or cricket bat.
Atom-ji's granddaughter Nausheen Golibar recounted to me how in the weeks leading up to the Diwali special edition, the whole family would be absent from home, sleeping at the office for days on end as they rushed the issue into print.
The magazine features incredible illustrations, many of them by the late G. Sandhwani, who lived several hours away in Jamnagar. Atom-ji recounted how he and Sandhwani used to send instructions for the illustrations, drafts, corrections, and final products back and forth between Jamnagar and Ahmedabad using the government bus driver as a courier. (He was paid in free copies.) Look at these beauts:
The magazine went on indefinite hiatus during the pandemic, but there's talk of it starting up again. It was a real pleasure and honour for us to meet the royal family of Gujarati pulp fiction who were behind it for so many years. Many thanks to them for meeting and spending time with us--and also to Kickstarter campaign contributor Bharg Mankodi, who came along to act as interpreter!
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