Playing with words

Khilauna was published by Shama,a well loved literary monthly of India and Pakistan,brought out by the Dehlvi brothers—Yunus,Idrees and Ilyas. Their father Yusuf Dehlvi had firmly cemented his reputation as an Urdu publisher in Delhi,working out of the Shama Building at Asaf Ali Road. The Khilauna Book Depot brought out little bubbly storybooks for kids that were so popular that children used to register for them in advance at street libraries for ek anna (six paise) and later 10 paise for a day. This was when Urdu book libraries could be found everywhere in Shahjahanabad.

The magazine cost 50 paise when it was its first published,went up to 62 paise in the late Sixties and was 75 paise in the Eighties before it shut down in1987. When it was around,the children loved its illustrations. Its team of artists was headed by the inimitable Siddiqui Artist and included Jagdish Pankaj,Zia Faizi and Ghayasuddin.

When Shama stopped publishing the magazine,its readers turned collectors. While some refuse to tell anyone about their collections,stashing them away in trunks and suitcases,there are others who trade Khilauna issues with fellow collectors.

Says Aziz Burney,joint editor of the Urdu daily Rashtriya Sahara: “When I read Khilauna,I escape back into my childhood.” There are more Khilauna lovers like him. There is 70-year-old Shamim Hanafi,an Urdu professor,who spends much of his free time rummaging through raddi shops and roadside booksellers and 50-year-old Atyab Siddiqui,a lawyer whose eyes turn wistful when he recollects the distinctive smell of the magazine,“right from the feel of those pages to the sheer pleasure of being lost in the story”.