Cosmo on the railway platform

charukesi March 21st, 2005

I was away this weekend in a small town on the Andhra Pradesh - Karnataka border - one of those thousands of towns across India racked by identity crisis - literally, as the journey takes you across AP and Karnataka in turns every f ew minutes (this happened to me in MP - UP too) - now you see boards in Kannada and now in Telugu and now again in both AND Urdu too!

Anyway, the point is that as I was waiting for the train to arrive at the sation (on my way back to Bombay yesterday), I browsed through the small book stall on the platform. This guy did not have any newspapers in English - Telugu, Kannada, Tamil and Urdu, yes, but English, no.

Neither did he seem to have any English magazines - when he proudly dug out one for me - the latest issue of Cosmopolitan! Obviously small town rural India’s priorities too centre around ‘eight ways to keep your man hot’ (or whatever, now that summer is here).

I am still trying to understand this - and while on this, will a Hindi edition of Cosmo sell as well?

3 Responses to “Cosmo on the railway platform”

  1. # babluon 22 Mar 2005 at 12.18

    In Rome - act as the Romans. When in Karnataka read Kannada daily. Hindi cosmo wont work !!!

  2. # Ramchion 31 Mar 2005 at 00.16

    LOL!Well,the shopkeeper sure knows his priorities!English books are for seeing not reading :)

  3. # Charuon 31 Mar 2005 at 08.07

    R, spoken like a true expert! been there done that I see :)