AND JUST LIKE THAT, THE WEEK’s 40th year is over. Of the team that oversaw the first edition, only four of us remain with the organisation: my elder brother and then managing editor, Mammen Mathew, current editor-in-charge V.S. Jayaschandran, our first trainee R. Prasannan (now resident editor in Delhi), and me, the founding publisher.
The first employees of THE WEEK were just two: editor V.K.B. Nair at the head of the table and trainee Prasannan at the other end! All seats in between were filled later. The memories of the four of us could fill a magazine, but frankly this journey would not have been possible without the support of our readers. Some of you have stayed with us for the duration of the journey thus far, while others joined at different points. From the bottom of my heart, thank you.
The anniversary edition is a twin issue and one volume covers THE WEEK’s 40-under-40 list, a celebration of India’s youth and creativity. The talented people featured in the pages were chosen by experts in the respective fields. As I was looking at them, I felt that all of them seem so sure of where they are going, and that confidence shows in their work, too. I was all of 35 when THE WEEK was born, and most members of the founding team were under 40, too. I wonder if we were as confident when we were setting out! We must have done something right to have come thus far, from the days when glue pots, scissors, magnifiers, bromides, darkrooms and fat dictionaries were part of every newsroom. While some of the names in the 40-under-40 list will be familiar, there will be a few surprises, too.
While one volume shadows THE WEEK’s journey, I felt that the other—on prime ministers and their contributions—shadows my own life, as I was born in 1947. I was 17 when Lal Bahadur Shastri became prime minister and have followed his successors and their policies closely. It is said that it takes a village to raise a child, and it goes without saying that it has taken 14 prime ministers and many unsung others to get us where we are today.
The anniversary issue is not all about celebs and prime ministers. It is also about the forgotten and the many ‘unseen’ people around us, people we look through and pass by. They make our lives easy, but we often do not acknowledge them.
Some people are forgotten because they walked in the shadow of giants. Kasturba Gandhi, for one. Last month, Tushar Gandhi was in Kerala’s Palakkad district to visit the Sabari Ashram there, and he wept when he visited the nearby Kalmadam Sree Bala Ayyappa temple—the temple that “Ba” opened to all faithful, irrespective of caste and gender, in March 1925. She quietly entered the temple in the company of dalits and created history. The famous temple entry proclamation in Travancore would come in 1936, eleven years later.
Tushar’s tears were for his forgotten grandmother. History belongs not only to kings and prime ministers, but also to mothers. Where would we have been, but for their love, fortitude and forgiveness?
On that thought, let me stop. Here’s wishing you a merry Christmas and a blessed 2023.