COLLECTOR’S PRIDE
When you see Naresh Dudani sitting in his courtyard with magazines around him, you might think he’s an avid reader poring over his favourite picks. But a walk through the cozy home of this retired journalist in Ahmedabad reveals a collection of almost 30,000 magazines, including INDIA Today magazine copies in English and Hindi, that he’s collected over the past four decades. “My father introduced us to reading when we were children way back in 1963; he would buy Indrajal Comics and Chandamama for us and then urge us to preserve everything we read,” says the former news editor of the Indian Express in Ahmedabad, who retired in July 2014 after a 35 year-long career in journalism. By 1970, Dudani was already hooked on to reading and started going to newspaper stalls to buy all the magazines that were available. “I spent all my
MY FATHER INTRODUCED US TO READING WAY BACK IN 1963; HE WOULD BUY INDRAJAL COMICS AND CHANDAMAMA AND THEN URGE US TO PRESERVE EVERYTHING WE READ.
pocket money on them,” he says.
Even now, Dudani buys 25 magazines every month and scours the internet looking for old issues of various magazines that he’s missed. His “30,000 plus” magazines are neatly arranged in chronological order and piled around the house—in the library, living room and the bedroom. “From children’s books to sports magazines, I have almost everything that’s available,” he says. While luxury and fashion magazines don’t interest him much, Dudani’s collection has a wide range of titles from across the country in English and Hindi. He has now started creating photo albums of cover pages of various magazines in his collection and among the first to be uploaded on his Facebook page were the covers of INDIA Today from the seventies and the eighties. Contact facebook.com/naresh.dudani