Indie prints

BluSlate is held aloft by a core team of four editors,one designer,and one website professional. One of the editors is Javits Rajendran,a BCom student at Spicer College,who carries around a little black book to jot down poetry on whatever inspires him. “The idea was to have a magazine that worked on submissions,like some American journals I had contributed to as a student there. We invited quite a few writers and poets as well. I met poet Hoshang Merchant (Yaraana: Gay Writing from India) at the ‘Poetry with Prakriti’ event in Chennai last year and he agreed to an interview for the inaugural issue. The key was and is to let people know. Facebook has helped a lot in that direction. We had put up just 10 posters around,but the sales are moving.”

The idea started taking form in mid-December and on February 19 the journal was officially launched at the Kalachaya Cultural Center on Senapati Bapat road. In the run up to it,engaged in stuff like “talking to the printer and making sure the paper is right” was Fergusson college student Mukta Patil. “We never wanted it to be exclusive or elitist,neither are we claiming to be an authority on literature. The idea was to get submissions from anyone who writes,paints or draws. And we picked whatever touched us. BluSlate aims to be mostly a forum for Indian amateur writing.”

A reflection of similar sentiments comes from Mumbai. Nether was launched in September 2010 and re-launched informally at the recently concluded Prithvi Theater Festival. The first edition embraced 12 poets,four short story writers and an interview of poet Ranjit Hoskote between its covers. “We met at University of Mumbai,thought up the idea and it lay dormant in our heads for a year before we pushed ourselves to go talk to people and let them know that we exist. Once the submissions were in place,it took just about two months to launch it,” says Avinab Dutta,one of the editors.

While the quarterly magazines fill up between issues,online blogs keep the movement alive through updates on more submissions.

The third Nether issue is due in March,but the team still admits to playing with ambivalence when it comes to finances and distribution. “See,literary venues are our spots. There are corners and cults of readers,but it’s a very small community and we do not have a reliable model to reach out to people with. But there need to be more such blind movements in literature,where possibly every aspect of logistical planning is a scare. It’s an urgent situation that will thrive through youth support,at least for the time being,” Dutta chuckles.