Back in the lead

The Hindu : Metro Plus Chennai / Madras Miscellany : S. MUTHIAH: "The latest audited circulation figures show the Ananda Vikatan back in the lead amongst all Tamil weeklies, a position it held consistently till the 1940s, when newcomer Kalki and, then, Kumudam, in the 1950s, challenged it. The announcement comes as Ananda Vikatan celebrates its 80th birthday.

Ananda Vikatan owes its original editorial content to a monthly called Ananda Bodhini which was founded in 1915 by a mail order businessman Nagavedu Munnuswami Mudaliar. In an age where mail order purchasing was popular, Mudaliar started his journal with "a readable mix" to increase his business. It was a journal that was to fade in 1930, after a new challenger established itself.

When Ananda Vikatan was started in 1925 by Poothoor Vaidyanatha Iyer, it wasn't much of a challenger. His formula of twice-told jokes, humorous verse and some literary efforts may have been a journalist's view of a magazine but not a business proposition. And, so, he sold the monthly to S.S. Vasan, who was just then making his way in the mail order and advertising business. Using both skills and a livelier editorial content Vasan made Vikatan a success — as well as his mail order business. Contributing to the success were the first prize competitions he introduced in Tamil publications.

Moving from Mint Street to Broadway, Vikatan first became a fortnightly, then, in 1933, a weekly. With that change, the journal set the format for the popular Tamil magazines of today.

When Vikatan moved to Broadway, it was joined by `Mali' Mahalingam and `Kalki' Krishnamurthy. Mali and C.V. (Morgan) Margabandu with their sketches, Kalki with his words, Vasan with his business acumen and eye for the right formula, and T. Sadasivam as advertising manager were to take Vikatan to great heights. The mix they blended was short stories, serials, a few features — most of it rehashed from the British and American journals — all interlaced with humorous skits, biting satire, clever cartoons and light-hearted jokes bordering on the burlesque. Mali's and Morgan's cartoons and Kalki's brilliant serials as much as Vasan's pioneering crossword puzzles and tempting mail order offers made Vikatan the leader in magazine journalism not only in Tamil but in almost any other Indian language.

It was a success that enabled Sadasivam to do the unheard of, to entice the British consumer product manager. He took full-page advertisements in the Advertiser's Review and Advertiser's Weekly, both published out of London, and asked in them, "Is your advertisement being carried in the Vikatan?" And soon they were — making the journal successful enough to acquire its own property on Mount Road, from where it is once again now beginning to proclaim itself the leader. "