Friday, March 5, 2010

# Madhuri

'The Times of India' publication holds a glorious history of being the oldest and a major baton of the Indian print media from a period spanning more than 170 years.
This publication gave us many cherished magazines covering all major readership areas such as The Illustrated Weekly Of India,Dharamyug,Filmfare,Femina to name a few and comics such as Indrajal comics.

Along with Filmfare,which covers up Indian Film Industry,there was another one such magazine quenching the thirst of Indian Hindi readers and that was Madhuri.
Madhuri was a fortnightly started in 1964 and carried up to late 80' after which it was rechristened as 'Hindi Fimfare' and that too ultimately ceased publishing in early 90's.
Madhuri used to be a class magazine avoiding usual gossips which were the regular feature of the Indian Hindi film based magazines of that time.It was associated with some of the finest writers,compilers and editors of Hindi cinema print media such as Isaac Mujawar,Raju Bharatan,Vinod Tiwari,Rauf Ahmad,Harish Raghuvanshi,Firoz Rangoonwala,Vishwas Nerurkar and others.
I was a great fan of Madhuri though i have read very few issues of it and later read mostly 'Hindi Filmfare' in early 90's.The features,articles,printing and page quality of Madhuri were of high class and simply unmatched by any of other Hindi film magazine till now.
its surprising that there is no information available about Madhuri on net,sites such as Wikipedia have no information about Madhuri.I have tried to provide at least brief information about it without going into deeper details.



























I am posting a article from Nov.1987' issue Madhuri covering up the sad demise of Kishore Kumar rather than posting complete magazine.Let me know if this interests you then i will be posting more such selected articles/features from Madhuri and other magazines.









































Similarly here is another feature from Sept.1980 issue of Madhuri which was published after another great singer Mohd.Rafi untimely demise.





















Did you remember Anwar Hussain!!He used to play mostly villain's role.He was the brother of actress Nargis and maternal uncle of Sanjay Dutt.Here is one such article from April 1988 issue of Madhuri which was published after his death.























Coming back to comics here is a Sustram-Chustram comic feature from a vintage issue of Madhumuskan.



















































































29 comments:

Rafiq Raja said...

Never heard about Madhuri magazine until now. It's true, TOI or Bennet Coleman Inc. as it is formerly known have done pretty great things, which can only be dreamt by other publishers in India.

Hopefully, they would come back to the comics medium, is what I sincerely hope, but their present focus seems to be on the Satellite TV channels.... maybe things would change.

Going to take some time and read those Rafi,Kishore Kumar articles, should be a lot of learning out of the life from these personalities.

Thanks for sharing Zaheer Bhai.

Silly Boy said...

Marvellous.
Before I could comment on Lot Pot you have come with another post. I am not sure about others but I always want these posts. YOu forgot to mention 'Dharamyug'. I think it was also publication of Times of India group. Do you have old Dinmaan. Did they use to carry any comic feature in them?

Silly Boy. said...

For Rafiq Raja:- If you read carefully Inderjal Comics you must find Madhuri Advertisements in them especially those of 1983-84 issues. Still waiting for the photographs of your collection on your blog.

Comic World said...

Rafiq Raja: Rafiq Bhai,as pointed out by SB,one can easily find the ads of Madhuri in our own Indrajal comics.
Madhuri was one of the best Hindi Film magazine which i have ever came across.It was not like other film magazines of today which only focus to peep into stars private life and never leave a opportunity to bring out any dirt or so called 'scoop' in filmy terminology.
'Stardust'is a infamous example of
such kind of magazines.
Madhuri was rather a follower of meaningful film journalism focusing primarily on healthy discussions over Hindi celluloid world and unearthing rare information.Some of the most talented writers,analysts and journalists were proudly associated with it until Hindi readership in general and Hindi film print media in specific suffered a loss in its base.
Yes,Benet & Coleman are certainly capable of bringing back comic culture by venturing back in comic business but i apprehend that will they do so!
Its very appreciative on your part to have such a keen interest in Hindi magazines/comics despite of being not so much conversant in the language.I assure you these magazines of yesteryears are no less than treasure of lost information,the more you dwell it the more you are informed.

Comic World said...

SB: Thanks Buddy.Yes,Dharamyug was also a TOI publication,a magazine of Dharamyug stature deserves a special post which might be coming very soon here only.
I have to check that whether i have a issue of 'Dinman' or not then only i can answer your query about any comic feature in it,but i feel that i may be having a couple of Dinmans.
Waiting for your thoughts on Lotpot.

मोहम्मद कासिम said...

hi

madhuri magazine maine ek do baar kabadi se lekar badhi

it was a good film mag.

ye TOI ki publication tha ye aap se pata lagae

sukriya

delhi press ki patrikao ke bare mein likhe.
ek chota sa lekh mere blog par bhi hai.
sim786.blogspot.com

Comic World said...

Mohd.Qasim: Yes,Madhuri was a good magazine,will try to write on Delhi Press magazine as its an other glorious publication house.

मोहम्मद कासिम said...

hi zaheer bahi

please also mention in ur article that the comics/magazine are still in market or not and when shut down.

Comic World said...

Mohd.Qasim: Its already mentioned in the article that 'Madhuri' has already been shut down in early 90's.

Toonfactory said...

Zahir Bhai - Badi Umda aur Lajawaab post hai...Madhuri ke saath kuchh parivarik yaadein judi hain...as I told you earlier my father worked with them for a very little time, when he covered BR Chopra's 36 Ghante. He used to hang around with a newcomer who earned a lot of name with Ramayan - Vijay Arora. Papa ji also interviewed Rajkumar sahab for the same movie for Madhuri. But because of some personal reasons he couldn't continue with them, nevertheless Madhuri was indeed one of the brilliant film magazines in India.

Thanks for posting these rare articles on Kishore Da's death and Rafi Sahab and Anwar Hussain's memoirs...

I always feel Film Journalists from that era used to be personally attached to the artists unlike today's scoop oriented media people who love to play with their images, something started in late 70s early 80s by scoop masterminds like Shobha De (who once infamously wrote in an issue of Stardust about a sexual perversion Rajesh Khanna had, a scoop that can't be out unless shobha was involved in the entire procedure).

But today's so called stars and starlets themselves are hungry of this fast and cheap publicity. My brother works as an Entertainment Reporter today with a leading News Channel and when he tells us about the cheap publicity hogging tactics of these newbies I really feel they themselves ask for such scoops. Anyway this is a topic which we should discuss some other time...Right now I would say THANKS AGAIN for posting a gem.

Vishva Prakashan ke saath-saath ek Mitra Prakashan par bhi post ho jaaye to mazaa aa jaayega!

Comic World said...

Toonfactory: Welcome Alok Bhai,its nice to know about your father's association with 'Madhuri',if you can post some of the interviews done by him then it would prove a nice reading for all of us.
Well,'Vijay Arora' before being famous by 'Meghnath' character of Ramayana,had impressed me much earlier by his charming and cute looks in movie "Yaadon Ki Barat"(1973) in which he played opposite to Zennie baby(Zeenat Aman),but after it he didn't proved out to be a great fiddler with success.
Vijay Arora arose great expectations when he bagged gold medal for acting during graduating from FTII in 1971,he was having a cute chocolatee face and was all set to foot into the traditional Indian Hero image of those times but seems fate was not onto his way.
Yeah,agreed,journalists of those times were much concentrated towards exploring creative sides of actors/actress rather then digging out dirts from their personal life,not alike the shutterbugs of modern time who are always in greedy search of any such so called scoop thus leaving no place of exploration for the creative aspect of this creative medium.

Vitesh said...

i used to own this issue of Madhu Muskan...

Thanks Zaheer for posting this...

Comic World said...

Vitesh: Welcome Vitesh.

Anonymous said...

Thanks for bringing this post. It reminds me of my childhood when my neighbour(uncle) who used to get the magazenes like Dharmyug,Madhuri,Dinmaan. And i was eagerly waiting to get a chance to go through them.

Comic World said...

Anon: You are welcome,it would have been nice if you would have left a name also.

Anonymous said...

Thanks a lot for sharing. Really it reminds me my childhood days. How I used to ask our papaer wala to give me all the magazines for few hrs before delivering to the owner just to read weekly future bhavishya vani & films news. Maja aa gaya yeh jankar ki hamari tarah ke aur bhi log en magzines mein ek ajib sa apnapan dekhte hein. Thanks again.

Comic World said...

Anon: Welcome,it would have been nice if you would have left a name also.
More article from such vintage magazines are about to come on this space,pl be tuned.Thanks

gaur said...

Comic world....Thnx a lot for this TREASURE of young age memories....times of india publication ...dehli press...mitra prakashan..geeta press,gorakhpur...ONLY MEMORIES remain ....!!

pj said...

i have more than 350+ issues of madhuri magazine....and some are very rare like 5 issue of 1970s.....

Hardev Krishan said...

फिल्म जगत की गहरी जानकारी प्रदान करती थी माधुरी। अपने जमाने की बहुत अच्छी पत्रिका थी यह। आपसे निवेदन है कि ऐसी पोस्ट और लगाएं।
धन्यावाद

Unknown said...

Hi
my name is kaushal I loved this magazine and want the rare collection of old music notations that were posted at that time in madhuri magzine .Will you help me if you have that collection.my email id is kaushalk9950@gmail.com.

Dr Rajesh sinha said...

हिंदी सिनेमा के बाल कलाकारों पर भी कुछ जानकारी दे 1940 से 1985 तक

Dr Rajesh sinha said...

क्या बाल कलाकार पर आधारित जानकारी उपलब्ध करवा सकते हैं

Unknown said...

Wow

Unknown said...

Hello sir mujhe legendary singer Mukesh ji par jo Madhri aayi thi wo chahiye. Mil paegi kya? Please agar mil pae to batae

Unknown said...

Hello sir mujhe Legendary Singer Mukesh Ji par jo Madhuri aayi thi wo chahiye. Mil paegi kya?

Tejasvi Khatry said...

Hello, do you still have the editions?

Zaheer said...

Yes.

Tejasvi Khatry said...

I am interested. Can we please connect? My email is tejas.stu@gmail.com

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