I am not sure if this is a review. May be this is an obituary. But I hope it is a plea. The collection Civil Lines is a compilation of five irregular magazines with the same name published in India between 1994 and 2001. The intent of the magazines, revised with each edition, was finally to promote new writing in English by anyone on themes dealing with India — but not criticism of books.

The anthology’s introduction mentions Dharma Kumar’s eccentric but relevant idea to create the magazine. She also financed the venture in its early days. Ravi Dayal published a few editions. Later, The Hindu and the British Council helped. Rukun Advani, the compiler of this anthology and the co-editor of the magazine wittily brings alive the meetings at Kumar’s bungalow near the zoo with Chivas Regal for company. How Mukul Kesavan was appointed editor, how Ivan Hutnik gave the name to the magazine:

Indians who could write beautiful English were all people of privilege. They either lived in the Civil Lines areas or had gone to Civil Lines missionary schools or had social connections with the upper-class civilities...

In this short a review it is hard to do justice to any one of the 24 pieces. ‘Bhopal Diary’ evokes the aftermath of the Union Carbide disaster or Ramachandra Guha’s piece which presages his later work on Verrier Elwin are historical in nature. Ruchir Joshi’s piece evokes childhood, ‘Stains’ by Manjula Padmanabhan evokes the body, Ghosh’s translation of Tagore is brilliant, Dilip Simeon’s portrays the life on Indian roads through a truck driver. Tenzing Sonam takes us through Tibet and Kai Friese through Ladakh. Suketu Mehta unravels the sexual mind of an accountant. Each piece in the anthology is a gem to behold. The best part is today, 15 years after the first issue and mostly during the period the magazine was around each of the writers has become famous and known for their works.

The introduction to each magazine shows how in that short period so much changed in the environment in which the magazine was trying to make its presence felt. The first edition starts by saying ‘Civil Lines hopes to appear irregularly’, prophetic words those. Though I think even the editors did not then imagine how right they would be. In the second issue the editors say, ‘Civil Lines is numbered, not dated.’ The numbers came up to a total of seven, wish there were more. Who knows there might be one from the proceeds of this anthology? The fourth edition that came after three years from the third starts with, ‘Resurrections are momentous, joyous.’ I hope we have another joyful moment soon.

Publishing is a tricky business. No one knows where the next bestseller will pop up and how much it would earn. It remains up to an editor to make a judgement on which manuscript to pick. In such a scenario a panel of experts commenting on writing is very welcome. We now have a magazine from Penguin and a lot of blog sites and websites like Sulekha. Yet, I feel there remains a dire need for a good neutral voice evaluating and projecting new talent. Even if it is, as Advani says, ‘biased’. Any choice is after all an exercise of bias, but when someone compiles ones choices, presents them to the world, we readers can only laud the effort.

Please buy the book and read it. But more than that display it well on your shelves. I can only hope the sales of the book will revitalise the magazine.

Amandeep Sandhu is the author of Sepia Leaves (Rupa)