Chronicles Regenerated
A Century-old Gujarati literary magazine,Visamisadi,has been
digitisid and given a new leaseof life
There was an unmistakable excitement as leading gujarati litterateurs gathered for a grand event in ahmedabad last week.There were tears of joy as Ratan Marshal,the state''slongest living writer,96,launched the digitised verson of visamisadi,a literary Gujarati
magazine that was published by legendary Gujarati journalist Haji Mohammed Allarakha Shivji of kutch, in Mumbai from 1916 to 1920. In its digitised avater it is available at www.gujarativisamisadi.com. It is, perhapes, for the first time that a century-old literary magazine has been revived after long obscurity. And the credit for reviving the essence of visamisadi goes to a group of
literature lovers industrialist Navnit Shah of Ashapura industries, writer Rajnikumar Pandya, journalist Dhimant Puurohit and multimedia professional Biren Padhya
The website contains all the issues of the monthly magazine,which purohit,shah, and Pandya dug out and collected from old families. The worn out pages have been painstakingly digitisid by Padhya with great skill
Shivji, son of a rich Khoja businessman, was determined to start a magazine that would set a new trail in Gujarati litERATURE. Chasing the dream, he ended up selling three family mansions and investing arround RS1.5 crore in its making. He died in an accident in Mumbai at the age of 43,broken-hearted,as he was never to able to recover the money he had invested in the magazine.
In its hey day visamisadi had created waves and found readers in prominent leaders of the day, including Mahatma Gandhi , while while giants like Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan founder K.M. Munshi wrote for it.In fact, the articale by Sarojini Naidu in which she callad Mohammed Ali Jinnah a harbinger of Hindu-muslim unity and, which was quoted out of cintext by L.k.Advani two years ago in pakistan, first appeared in this magazine. It was in one of its issues that the rare ictures of Jinnah''s beautiful wife, Ruti, were revealed to the public for the first time.
At the launch,an emotional Marshal observed,"this marks the rebirth of Haji Allarakha Shivji,who invested his entire life''s fortune in the magazine, but never got the recognition he deserved."The presence of many Gujarati litterateurs including Raghuvir Chaudhaty,Dhirubhai Thakar, Kumarpal Desai, Tarak Mehta and Vinod Bhatt,rovided a sense of approval for the event.
Indian literatutre lovers should learn from this experiment and help to restore such historical manuscripts.