JLT was awesome

After listening to 3 chapters of Haunted (a novel of stories) by Chuck Palahniuk and after seeing Oldboy, an interesting thought struck me. JLT was the best indian magazine for recommendations ever.

See I remember now that both Oldboy and Haunted were both recommended by them way back when they were still new. Had I known how amazing their recommendations were and had the resources to acquire said works of art, I would not have stopped in my pursuit of great entertainment that is of a quality much higher than the usual fucking drivel out there. 


Anyway, my point being that almost all the recommendations in JLT had calibre and class. Deep thought and research done in order to tell the public what the actual good material out there consisted of. 


Times Group who own such publications as The Times of India, Femina and The Mumbai Mirror were also the owners of this small and extremely decently priced magazine (It was priced at Rs. 5/- [ INR 5 = USD 0.10 ]). My theory is that they started it in order to avoid taxes while giving college kids jobs (the whole mag was contributed to, edited by and laid out by college students still going to college). It was a haven, a small little slice of intelligent youth having a voice and not being afraid to use it and if not that then just people speaking about stuff that was relevant to the demographic without sounding like a bunch of complete fucking morons.


The editorial team and staff writers were always great. They were insightful, well-read, funny, poignant and willing to get out there and deliver to their fans, however small we may have been. Till date, Vahishta Mistry remains my favourite editor of all time. Rohan was cool, Joel was great with music, Tanmay was always funny and light hearted, Sherwin seemed like a good replacement for Joel and he wrote a few good articles as well. Anuya, the editor who joined later always seemed tough but fair. Kanika came of as sweet and willing to give people a chance. There were others out there whom I can't recall off-hand but I assure you that the whole thing was bloody great. 


Soon, popularity started to increase. There was no advertising, there was just word of mouth. People would go into colleges and be seen reading it. Colourful covers and great content did the rest. One of the other big selling points was their posters. They were even great enough to print a mini-poster (single side tabloid size) of one of my favourite video game characters. No other magazine for youth had done this. Pioneers in their field, fucking pioneers I tell you (the amount of f* bombs I'm dropping and have dropped should tell you how great I found it and how passionate I was about this mag). 


What probably started out as a way to dodge taxes now became something that was bringing in profit and needing to be taxed on its own. So, you have a whole bunch of people reading this awesome mag and bringing in profit for the Times Group as well but as with all good things that happen to make money, the higher ups looked at their fucking spreadsheets and said (in a Homer Simpson voice), "Mmmmm lucrative." So they get this idea that they can make...drum roll please...more money. It starts off with the readers meet. To some of us fanboys we just saw it as a great way to meet our favourite mag makers in person not knowing that the *shudder* 'marketing executives' were watching our every move, recording every word and studying us like lab rats. How we spoke, how we dressed, how we behaved when taking biscuits offered to us and the way we sat and whispered amongst ourselves all somehow translated into "money, money, money" not the Abba song though. Still all was safe and JLT continued being great albeit slightly changed but not enough to make us care. Then time went by, Vahishta had left, the next generation of budding young writers and journalists were at the helm the next time a readers meet came around.


Then the worst news of all hit later with the new generation in control mere victims to the higher ups and their doings. They were going national and by national, they meant including the capital city and appealing to a much larger aka stupider audience. Now JLT was reaching more people and appealing to less. It wasn't long before the fans saw it for the piece of thrash it had become. The pride and joy of educated Mumbaikar teens patiently waiting a fortnight for their favourite mag filled with posters of cartoon characters, bands, tv show actors and beautiful cars started giving way to bollywood and mediocre content and added to the mess by including references to two different cities and not segregating them. The whole thing was in shambles, early issues that I decided to buy and read in the hope that maybe it can't be all that bad almost had me picturing the chaos in editorial offices as they tried to co-ordinate with one another across the country all the while struggling with college, exams and trying their level best not to be jaded from all the upper managements bullshit tactics.


JLT soon closed and I never even read the last issue or the last dozen or so. Like fruit, it had gone bad and there was no way of returning it to it's former glory. All was lost and I never even got to say goodbye. JLT were even nice enough to run an article of mine that I submitted online. I was supposed to get paid for it but the joy of seeing my words in print were more than enough payment for me.  To this day, I keep a stack of JLTs in my room. 7 posters, mini and regular adorn my wall with the JLT symbol on each one of them. I'm going to go through all of them again and check out everything they ever recommended to me. 


All in all, it was a good section of my life dedicated to watching the paper stand outside my house every alternate tuesday and rushing home to read my favourite magazine. Now that I think about it, it never really was a magazine; it was tabloid shaped and not on hard glossy paper affixed together like most magazines out there. They were sheets like any other paper and yet it was so much more. It was something in between, something beautiful, something to look forward to, something to be proud of, something that made me smile, something that made me think and something that was worth keeping.


I don't know why I wrote this post. I don't why this sudden urge of nostalgia hit that coalesced into words but if I had to answer your questions I would simply use the magazines title to answer everything with a single sentence: Just Like That.