Archived Publications
As a child, I was always enamored by the printing press. I grew up with the sounds of the huge printer machine inside our house. My father used to edit, print, and publish a politically progressive daily, "Desha Katha" in Athagarh, Orissa. There was no computers then. Only compositors and typesetters. Permanent black inks and their strong smells. Radical visions of freedom fighters who lived in the neighborhoods, and trade unionized workers who used to come from various villages to greet my father - their leader, Comrade Subhas Chandra Pattanayak - customary salute - laal salaam! Plenty of hope that India was once colonized, now free, and in future was going to be a socialist secular republic just as the Constitution declared. Desha Katha used to inspire people to do local acts with a global dream. To that extent, my family also used to be the local stockist for the wonderful books published by the friendly and loving people of the Soviet Union - Raduga Publishers, Progress Publishers, Mir Publishers! Books were the mirrors of my life. Their pages, my fragrance. Their words, my food.
Inspired by my father, I joined the world of print media very early on. When I was 10, I started contributing to an Oriya sports magazine "Khela O Khelali", published from Cuttack, Orissa. I used to mostly write about my cricketing hero, the legendary Sunil Gavaskar. When I turned 13, I profiled Nelson Mandela's revolutionary activities in Oriya newspaper "Swarajya" - the oldest daily from Bhubaneswar. Subsequently, I wrote for other Oriya dailies such as Sambad, Dharitri, and Kalinga Mail. When I turned 18, I started writing a weekly column on World Cup Cricket in Sun Times, Orissa's only English Daily. By the time, I joined Indian Institute of Mass Communication in New Delhi, I had already a sense of what mass media were all about. I ended up learning other tools of the trade - layouts/designs using pencils, scissors, knives, and plates.
Due to financial challenges faced by professional scribes, I was advised against joining the world of journalism. At one point, I was deciding in favor of becoming a psychologist and therefore chose to pursue an academic career out of it. But little did I realize that I could leave journalism, and yet it would not let me be in peace! Through writing, I had to express myself. There simply was no other way out! I formally entered professional journalism in 1999. In New Delhi, Bhubaneswar and Ranchi, while working in the newsrooms of Economic Times, Asian Age and Hindustan Times I gathered some of the most telling moments. English language corporate media was slowly taking over Indian readership at the beginning of liberalized economic phase of the late 90's. And I soon learnt how to prioritize news based upon not what was instructive or desirable for social progress, but what was worthy of popular consumption or seductive distraction. As a mark of protest, "Ego" was born - journalism from the lenses of social psychologists! Spending my salaries in publishing and managing Ego magazine led me and my comrades - Amrita Misra, Esha Patnaik, and Rakshi Rath - to experience press freedom! Ego did not last forever. But sure gave way to a feeling that it was necessary to imagine ways and means for alternative publications. Saswat.com was only natural an outcome...Here, then are some of my memorable publications - some trivial and some critical, but regardless, these are my gifts...to you.