The planned post was on the best books I purchased for the little girl and the books she loves. When I sat down to write on books that I purchased for her. My thoughts moved to my childhood days of reading amazing magazines and monthly books. This post is about my childhood days into books and reading. I hope my story will take you back to your childhood memories of books and magazines.
To start with this post, I have to share my experiences as a bookworm. My story into reading books starts from Age 5 when I was able to read words and understand them. My inspiration is my father who used to read stories every night before I doze off and buy kids magazines from the railway station while we travel during the vacations. He has a strong tone and holds amazing expressions on his face while reading the stories. This created lots of visual images and many imaginations in my mind. And there were are also funny times when my dad slept halfway through and I completed the rest of the story and kissed him goodnight and slept.
The first story that every Indian child might have heard is “The Thirsty Crow” and “The Cunning Fox”. Then the genre changes to devotional “The Mischievous Child – The Butter Thief (Little Krishna)”.
My little one is lucky as she gets to hear all the bedtime stories from my father. This time he can’t sleep as the mischievous kid is his own Grand-Daughter and she wouldn’t let him sleep until she gets bored. She would demand the same story to be looped several times. (This is called the Deep Memorizer ;-)).
The experiences of reading short stories started from “The Young World” it is a children’s supplement newspaper from The Hindu. This newspaper had many articles on science, technology, history, entertainment, and many other topics. There were also challenging quizzes, arts and crafts, interactive games. When I was in school I waited for Saturday to come for 3 reasons: Reason 1: No school the next day so no sleeping early and packing the bag the previous night. Reason 2: The Young World magazines come. Reason 3: My dad comes home early on Saturdays and I get to spend time with him and he reads stories and helps me solving puzzles from the magazine. Those were the precious days of my life.
The Magazines that I read as a kid were :
ARCHIE’S
How will the 90’s kids missed this pep comic book. The story travels with Archie’s and his girlfriends Veronica and Betty. This story still keeps continuing in series, Archie’s is yet to decide whom heis going to marry.
TINTIN
Tintin shows young readers that the world in all its complexity is theirs to bestride ― The Wall Street Journal
One the books I used to search in the library evertime I borrowed a book.It’s still an all time favorite.
ASTERIX
TINKLE
It is a comic book with lots of short stories and some were continuous stories and a few were moral stories. The favorite stories “Suppandi” a funny character just like this day Mr. Bean and
“Shikari Sambu” is everything he doesn’t appear to be. Although known as Shikari, he is no hunter. He is a conservationist and a wildlife expert. All he loves is a fluffy pillow and a comfortable Sofa to sleep in. Once by mistake he hit a man-eater (Tiger), people in his village started to praise him and come to him for help.
The favorite stories “Suppandi” a funny character just like this day Mr. Bean
CHAMPAK
Champak was one my favorite monthly magazines, whenever I see the newspaper boy, I keep asking him when will I get Champak, with a smiling face he would reply next week papa.It’s a monthly magazine with lots of short stories and puzzles.To complete the crosswords and read the stories it will take a month.
- Malgudi days by R.K Narayanan :A wonderful book and after reading this it brings back lots of memories during my school days
- https://amzn.to/3zzNtbI
GOKULAM
This reminds me of my school auto trip, there was a Gokulam readers group and it was competition on who gets the magazine first every month.And we keep talking about what will happen next the interesting suspense stories and sometimes solve every puzzle during our journey to school.Our Auto Driver(we call him Uncle with lots of love and respect who was the calmest and the safest person to go with unlike these days drivers) he would also comment on the suspense story or crack jokes when he is unable to understand the language.
CHUTTI VIKATAN
This is a Tamil Magazine, more than the stories, I enjoyed the crafts that comes with the magazine, This magazine was very rarely available in my area and I enjoyed making crafts with my brothers on a Sunday evening.
Inspired from my Auto friends I started writing stories and I won an award as a “Story Teller” in my school Read books are one of my favorite pastimes and enjoy it till day. My story starts with reading children’s story and right now if you ask me I would show you a parenting book or a babies book.
Every book, I mentioned here has brought lots of memories, be it with my father, brothers,or my auto friends. I hope every book I buy for my daughter will also give her lots of memories and lots of experiences in her life.
If you are a book lover and if you have memories related to books share it in my comments I would like to read them too.
Stay Tuned my next post will of Akshara’s book collections.
(P.S : I have only mentioned children’s magazines, I do read “books” from great Authors.)
13 replies on “The Books of 90’s”
Nostalgic! There was balarama and balabhoomi similar to tinkle in Malayalam. I used to wait for it to arrive on friday mornings and finish reading it a day. And stories told by grandparents are the best ❤️ Great list, Ramya.
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Thank you so much.. And grandparents are the best story tellers, I remember the stories told by my grandma after our dinner, during our vacation.. I forgot to mention that
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I have heard of Balabhoomi, from my auto friends in Kerala
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Ohh is it? 🙂
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Yes, heard friends taking about it in auto ride.. isn’t it more like a story book rather than a comic book?
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A haze memory, though
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Its just like tinkle. Different kinds of stories and activities
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Ok, I have a hazy memory of hearing Bala bhommi from friends
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Champak was my favourite too😄😄
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Hifi Champak fan
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Nostalgic! Champak and Chandamama are my childhood reads. So miss them now.
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Yes, I remember Chandamama the big book.. true, we enjoyed them a lot and I have added links to purchase those books through amazon, if you want to read them now.
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[…] is a continuation from my previuos post on “The books of 90’s“. Books has been so special in my life and help my imaginations a […]
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