Even the Readers Digest?

It was sad to read the following news today:

Reader’s Digest to file for bankruptcy protection

The publisher of Reader's Digest, the country’s most popular general interest magazine, said Monday it will file for Chapter 11 protection with a plan to swap a portion of its debt for ownership of the company.

Practically grew up with this book since my parents have subscribed to it from the time it landed in India. It even made my mother start a similar magazine at home to keep the 5 of us siblings engaged during the holidays. We used to write our own versions of articles and stories which was edited by my mother. She compiled them and either typed it or re-wrote by hand and named it the "Philip's journal". Since we used to write anything and everything and drop it into a box that was kept specially for this, we used to wait eagerly to see if it passed our mother's editing. It was a proud moment if it ever reached the final print.

Indian edition

The Indian edition was first published in 1954. Its circulation then was 40,000 copies. Today, the magazine is published in India by Living Media India Ltd., and sold over 600,000 copies monthly in 2008 — a fifteen-fold increase. It not only includes local Indian articles but international articles as well.

The real life drama section was always a thrill to read and the “quotable quotes” was the first page that I enjoyed reading. During the growing up years the collection of articles was always a source of comfort and inspiration.

I do read that the magazine may continue but not as before. Seems they do not have much audience amongst the young and also since similar articles are in abundance on the internet it was slowly losing its readers.

The Indian edition was not upto the mark but I always opened this little book with much eagerness and have read every single page of it. Here in Kuwait I did arrange for the magazine to be delivered at home but the delivery has always been erratic.

....edited to add the following from NDTV

"The Chapter 11 filing will apply only to the company's US businesses...its operations in Canada, Latin America, Europe, Africa, Asia and Australia-New Zealand will not be affected. RDA's international operations are expected to have adequate funding based on continuing operations and access to proceeds from the DIP (debtor in possession) financing," the company said.

Earlier in March 2009, Indian Software exporter HCL Technologies had announced a seven-year IT operations and management engagement with RDA.

It is sad to see them leave the stage...

It is really sad to see them go so early. After Rajan P. Dev, it is now Murali.

Murali will remain one of my favourite actors and sadly these great actors have not acted enough in the Malayalam cinema. He acted raw and should be called the real superstar. I guess he was not confined within any Superstar status and was free to just act. He never needed any “props” unlike the current superstars, to remain on the screen and at times as a pain to the viewers. We have superstars whom the fans want to remain eternally young, virile and what not but we loved watching Murali for his personality and acting alone. Even the media was stingy in using the Bharat before his name and I wish Murali could have seen the real support that he had from the viewers. He was an avid reader and a writer too, although I wonder if his political leaning did reduce his chance to act in more movies.

And talking about the recent deaths in the Malayalam film industry, is this industry getting to be injurious to the health of those involved in it? Are they being over taxed? Are some of our actors getting too involved with the character and hence getting affected psychologically? It is understood that unlike Bollywood actors, the Malayalam actors are required to act in a controlled manner and hence act real.

Watched “Billu (Barber)” during the weekend and yet again wondered how SRK continues to rule. Was it not very obvious that Irfan Khan did a much splendid job effortlessly?

Let me continue to wonder how some superstars are made and sustained.