Mixed Mail

Mr Purie's anniversary editorial notes that among the many wonderful things which happened to his magazine since it became a weekly was the quadrupling of readers' letters. This is one area where Outlook can claim some degree of parity with IT; however, for us at least it has been something of a mixed blessing. The increase in our case is largely made up of two species of letters. One, pure abuse. Two, pure sycophancy. The pure abuse is initially more interesting to read but quickly becomes tedious. Take, for instance, Mr M.S.Kilpady from Mumbai in our last number. He believes my natural home should be the "Agra mental hospital" rather than Nizamuddin East. The humour and sarcasm in being charac-terised a CIA or an ISI agent suffers from constant repetition and is victim to the law of diminishing returns.

The pure sycophancy mail is equally unenlightening. Some letter-writers are convinced that if they madly cheer not the editor's editorship but his personal writings, their contributions are bound to get printed. Whenever I read a letter beginning with "Hats off to Mr Mehta" or "Kudos to Vinod Mehta", my first and last instinct is to dump it. Frequently, the praisers are so busy praising the editor that they invariably miss the point of the article they are energetically eulogising.

What one is looking for is the 200-word "Dear Sir" postcard challenging the magazine's assumptions in prose which is provocative, well-argued and witty. Naturally, such gems are few and far between, but I should not complain overly. At Outlook we get more of this rare variety than we possibly deserve.