BIJOY KUMAR Y
Bijoy reflects on his alma mater on its 25th anniversary
PLEASE ALLOW ME TO USE THIS SPACE TO talk about the magazine I used to edit before joining my current position at Mahindra. Motoring was never meant to compete with other publications and as much as I know, it doesn’t even today – at least as far as content selection goes. Which is a good thing.
Back in 1999, I was discussing the possibility of a quarterly auto mag with TN Ninan, the then editor of Business Standard. I was already doing a dedicated page on things automotive for the parent publication and I was all set, afterburners and all, to come up with a proper magazine. “Who is your reader?” he asked. And trust me I had no clue. I told him that it will be mostly readers of business newspapers since we were associated with one.
It was, of course, a total lie.
What makes an auto magazine? Of course, it is the ‘character’. It just cannot be a collection of drive/ride reports, some numbers, and a price list. You can give a certain character to a magazine by exceptional writing or out of the world photography. You can give character by defining it – like, ‘For the Thrill of Driving’. Some earn the character by being first to break the news and some by being extremely consumer friendly.
And then there are magazines that derive their character thanks to the folks who create them. Month after month. As the editor of Business Standard Motoring, I was privileged to work with some extraordinary men who influenced it with their passion and magnificently corrupted it with their determination. The best part is that they didn’t know they were doing anything special. It was the only way to do things.
Those are the guys who compared the new Rolls-Royce Phantom with the Phantom from 1930s. They couldn’t help but juxtapose everything under the sun with the Yamaha RD350, because they could. They created a new slug called ‘extreme test’ so they could get away with proper murder.
New cars and motorcycles, classic and vintage cars, and motorcycles – you name it, each genre of automotive writing was represented in every issue of the magazine.
It never mattered whether the Subaru Forester with a Chevy badge was on the cover before anyone else. What mattered was that we did have a good time on a dry riverbed before anyone else.
Did you say travel writing? No continent was too big that this team couldn’t cross. And yes, co-existed with such dinosaurs like Alta Vista. Go Google it if you insist!
Irreverence was the rule than exception and not even the spine was spared. Giving a niceenough headline to your colleague’s story was considered a big win.
Then there was the small existential issue of making money for the publisher. So, the team started doing buyer’s guides – two-, three-, four-wheelers and even multi-axle trucks. And during our spare time we made motorcycles and cars and instituted COTY awards. When it got really hot, we created ‘Summer of Speed’ specials and when it poured, we celebrated the ‘Slush Fests’. Full fledged track days? Yes, that too.
Hope you are getting the drift?
Once you got into BSM, you were assigned a Lamborghini title and the fun began full-on. They were doing what they liked and were encouraged to do only what they liked.
These fundamentals continue even today – and I congratulate Delhi Press, the current publisher of Motoring World and Pablo, Kartik and the talented bunch having fun producing it. I am happy that I could kick-start something that made me work with a league of extraordinary gentlemen and women.
I am not listing all the names only because of the tight word count for this column. Motoring has lasted a quarter century and is still rolling. Cheers!
As for the reader? Well, I still have no clue! ⌧
They were doing what they liked and were encouraged to do only what they liked