Wah India - Funky Sizzle
Mannika Chopra
For some, this magazine¿s approach is
feisty, fearless and provocative. For others it¿s simply gossipy, risqué,
sensation-driven journalism, with an editorial line that wears its regional
chauvinism on its sleeve.
Madhu Trehan speaks softly, rapidly. In a gravelly
voice, Wah India¿s editor-in-chief apologises for appointments made and
not kept citing her current preoccupations with lawyers. Trehan¿s whole
persona-- a lithe, worked out physique, clothed in a hip turquoise and pink
kurta, conversation punctuated by sips of Diet Coke and drags of a low nicotine
cigarette -- and that of her office -- chrome yellow and electric blue walls,
peopled by youngsters apparently not old enough to buy beer--is funky. It also
conforms completely with the personality of ¿Wah India.¿
The magazine launched in December 2000 is actually an off spring and carbon
copy of the broadband web site that preceded it six months earlier. It forms a
part of a larger multi-media Wah India family that includes a FM radio station
and a TV production house "We thought that a print edition of the site
would attract today¿s non-reader who doesn¿t look at ¿India Today¿ or ¿Outlook¿
but needs an alternative venue of information rather than simply regular news,
" explains Trehan.
It¿s difficult to describe or categorise Wah India. Visually
overwhelming, its editorial content at first glance seems sassy accompanied
with lots of silliness: Features like 50 Ways to Dump Your Lover, Red
Hot Sex Postures, Take the Bitch Test, Do Women Love Bastards?
abound. Call it Seventeen meets Cosmopolitan meets Star Dust
meets India Today. Most of the fortnightly¿s 67 pages move away from the
conventional gravitas that mark existing current affairs magazines to news that
amuses; and shocks. For some, this approach is feisty, fearless and
provocative. For others it¿s simply gossipy, risqué, sensational driven
journalism, with an editorial line that wears its regional chauvinism on its
sleeve.
Consider its latest cover story, issue dated May
1-15,2001. The cover headline shouts, ¿For Every 50 Indians there is one
Bangladeshi.¿ Through a peek-a-boo hole in the overlapping cover you see an
impoverished family of five (presumably Bangladeshi) squished in a cycle
rickshaw. Open the overlay and that visual is surrounded by multiple images of
a prosperous, middle class couple (presumably Indian) just stepping out of
their modest home to go to work. The tone of the cover feature is threatening.
India has limited resources which are being sucked up by illegal Bangladeshi
immigrants; this a ticking time bomb. The government better do something or
else. The story dovetails with another main feature on the killing of 15 Indian
jawans by the Bangladeshi Rifles and a chest thumping column by K.P.S. Gill,
former IG Punjab.
Of the eleven issues published at least five have tastelessly targeted
Pakistan. The back page of the magazine called ¿The Last Laugh¿ (suspiciously
similar to ¿The New Yorker¿s¿ Back Page) looks at issues through a
cartoonist¿s prism. However instead of looking at a range of current events, Wah
India appears fixated on taking cheap shots at Pakistan. A sampler. ¿Eight
reasons why Miss Pakistan didn¿t win the Miss World contest.¿ Two answers will
suffice-¿-She was honour killed on the way to her hotel¿; ¿Musharraf thought
she would be better off doing social service to him then to the rest of the
world.¿ In issue dated January 1-15,2001 Pakistan has been caricaturised as a
blowsy prostitute with all the strategic places marked with suggestive captions
to which even the National Commission for Women reacted strongly. (The
following issue of Wah India carried a meek apology.)