We’re here to tell you the Indian story simply and hope you can narrate the tales to your friends, families, and future generations.
It’s been a while. So, just as your OTT platforms refresh your memory when they return with a new season — let me recap the journey of The Indian Trumpet for you. It was the summer of 2013, and yes, it does feel that it was quite a long time ago when this magazine came alive. I had this idea to create a magazine — where we’d (mostly) take a moment to celebrate India’s colour, culture, and chaos — all that we, as Indian expats or even as Indians living in the country, craved and got nostalgic about. Little did I know that many lovely people would join hands to build a community, not just the magazine.
From then until now, The Indian Trumpet has celebrated the quirks of being an Indian — from our chai to pickles, our middle-class habits to our childhood games, and more. We also took a moment to get angry when we felt our country had wronged us.
We grew more extensive as Indians all over the globe read and shared The Indian Trumpet. Yes, running the magazine was a wild idea back then, and more so now as we re-launch the magazine in the winter of 2023. We’re now waking up after a tiny nap, as we’d occupied ourselves in nurturing stories elsewhere. We’re waking up in a different world — where reading magazines is getting labelled as an archaic activity, accounts have a shelf life of 24 hours, and content for consumption is more than what we can handle and available across more mediums than one can imagine.
Yet, we’re back, back when many magazines run by large publishing groups have shut shop. Why are we doing this? Strangely enough, that question doesn’t bother any of us Trumpet Blowers. For, other than being supported by many equally insane individuals, we still haven’t lost faith in the power of storytelling and journalism as we once knew it. We’re comfortable with the idea of ‘what if’ we cannot make a considerable difference, gain massive readership, and more — we’re here to tell you the Indian story simply and hope you can narrate the tales to your friends, families, and future generations.
So, shall we?
There were a bunch of people who realised that there was nothing more comforting than a plate of Pani Puri! A few others joined this bunch, giving this plate of Indian snacks various names — Gol Gappa, Puchka. Nobody objected as expected; instead, they all decided to stand in a queue, waiting patiently for their turn to be ‘served’ by the bhaiya (the street food vendor). Everything else, as they say, is history. Over spicy, tangy, and sweet servings, the bunch developed quirky habits of asking for an extra puri (complimentary) from the bhaiya, slurping down bowls full of extra pani, debating over how the ‘not-so-clean’ portion always tasted better than the ‘five-star’ street food experience….
And that’s the story we bring you in the Winter Special, The Pani Puri Edition.
Till we meet next, happy tooting.
