An Old Nostalgic Picture!

I fished out this picture of mine from some old albums nestling inside a cupboard which I was cleaning. I am sitting inside my editorial den in Army and Navy Building at Kala Ghoda, Bombay. At that time (Before I started gawking into a computer screen 12 hours of the day!) I was editor of the monthly journal of the Bombay Management Association. The magazine published management- related articles and had a circulation of 3000 copies and I did all I could to make it popular. (Yes, I had the sad duty of sending rejection slips, too!)

Those were pre-computer, pre-laptop, pre-internet, pre-cellphone days (see the clunky phone on my desk) and all I had was the Remington portable you can see beside me (misty eyed!). I used to type my editorial and articles on this beat up portable which I had to sell for scrap recently, as it had rusted from disuse. I enjoyed my work of editorship and got to learn a lot about publishing as it was done then, of which more hereunder.

Manuscripts were typeset and sent back by the press in long galleys. These were proofread and sent back to be manually pasted into page layouts. These layouts were again corrected and sent to press for a final proof. This proof was again corrected, made into positives, and then into plates and printed on offset machines. All this had to be done in one month and I had a hell of a crazy schedule back then. But, I loved the work, and those halcyon days still linger in a special place in my memory.