ABSTRACT
On a chilly winter afternoon in 1994 I came across a footpath vendor in Connaught Place selling magazines and books. Emblematic of British architecture in India, Connaught Place is one of the oldest shopping and business centers in New Delhi. In its wide corridors lined with columns, footpath vendors are a familiar counterpoint to the established shops. The vendors range from those selling books and magazines to Paan (a flavored betel leaf used as a mouth freshener after a meal) and – particularly in winter – roasted peanuts. As I stood looking at the magazines, people hurriedly walked behind me and others stepped out of shops to seek warmth from the weak winter sun. A few, like me, stopped to glance at the magazines on display before moving along. It was the magazine headlines that caught my interest, jostling with each other, vying for attention, each claiming to be “the” magazine for the contemporary Indian woman. As I decided to take a closer look, I noticed a series of new magazines that I had never seen before, as well as Indian editions of American women’s magazines. The vendor, eager to make a sale, exclaimed the virtues of several magazines he saw me peering closely at. Speaking in Hindi with complete authority about the popularity of these English language magazines, he urged me to buy them. I had heard and seen references to this “new Indian woman” in various places, ranging from television programs and advertisements to newspaper articles and Bollywood films. The new Indian woman was associated, on the one hand, with deteriorating Indian culture attributed to satellite television, and on the other, to the emergence of a more complex representation of women iconic of liberalized India. As the vendor extolled the virtues of one magazine over the other, I settled in for a longer chat. He told me which ones he managed to sell more of than others and offered his opinion on the marketability of the new American magazines versus the older Indian ones. I left about an hour later, my bag considerably heavier with several magazines, to consider the discourse on the new Indian woman.
