Today we took the delivery of the last Anandabazar Patrika a leading Bengali News Daily that our family had subscribes since 1942. Its not that Anandabazar Patrika is shutting down its just that our family has decided to stop subscribing to it.
Since childhood I and my sister used to eagerly anticipate for the newspaper vendor to deliver the morning news to us and inevitably we would both jump to catch the headlines. Remember there were no Internet, no cable television and of course no Facebook so newspaper was the only source of information. Around 1989 we also started subscribing to The Telegraph and the special cherry on the cake was The Telegraph magazine every Sunday. This was later renamed as Graphiti but the content style remained the same.
Anandabazar Patrika was a distinct voice against the left during the 80’s and 90’s and the main highlight would most be the failures of the Jyoti Basu’s government. Mamta Banerjee was an upcoming leader in the 90’s and would be pictured in her white sari, somehow the black and white prints made those saris look whiter. For the past couple of years I started seeing that the coverage was becoming more and more political in nature and the real news started missing.
First we chucked out The Telegraph but somehow could not do the same for Anandabazar Patrika since it had lot of sentimental values. This morning as the newspaper delivery boy was delivering Anandabazar Patrika my father interrupted him and told him to stop delivering Anandabazar Patrika from tomorrow and instead he requested the delivery of another upcoming Bengali daily. I was quite taken back since it was my father who held on to Anandabazar Patrika as me and my sister take our daily update from Internet or ironically from the Facebook. I decided to click the cover page of this significant edition and put up this blog.
Goodbye Anandabazar Patrika from the Mukherjee family… and thank you for all the wonderful headlines during my childhood. May you continue to flourish but without us…