By Kollengode S. and Premlata Venkataraman
Assessing the articles in The Patrika against the goal it set for itself (as detailed in this lead article), one can say, the magazine has met its objectives. You can access the other articles at www.pittsburghpatrika.com.
Unlike New York/NJ, DC/MD/Northern VA, and the Bay Area where hundreds of thousands of Indians live, barely 18,000 Indians live in the Pittsburgh Metro region (Southwestern Pennsylvania, the West Virginia Panhandle and Eastern Ohio). And yet, we have people among us contributing articles for the magazine. These writers take time from their busy careers as engineers, financial planners, teachers, physicians, dancers, musicians, and Hindu priests to express themselves. They have written poems, personal experiences, cynical observations on the desi lifestyles and contemporary issues, reviews of events in Indian performing and visual arts, humorous pieces, and many others.
These writers trust the integrity of the magazine, even when they do not always agree with the tone and contents of some of the articles. A big Thank You to these writers.
The magazine deliberately stayed away from the glossy filmi gossips, even though we received suggestions from well-meaning readers that these items would make the magazine more lively. Yet, the magazine has survived for these twenty-five years with your support.
Personally, publishing this magazine was both an outward journey, and an inward journey as well for us as we worked in our spare time seeking advertisers, interacting with writers in developing stories, and reviewing and finalizing manuscripts. Our interactions with people strengthened our cultural and spiritual moorings as liberal Hindus, as Indians, and now as American citizens.
Our ideas about our faith was reinforced when we went to the original texts and read on their several interpretations, which we shared with readers in many articles. It helped us to go back to India’s literary/spiritual traditions over three millennia in Sanskrit, Hindi, Kannada, Punjabi, and Tamil languages and place their refreshing relevance to our contemporary life — here and now — in these United States.
Laying out the magazine integrating stories with graphics and with advertisers’ artworks has been a challenge requiring great attention to details. All through these years, the magazine has been able to satisfy advertises and writers, while producing a reasonably well-edited and well-laid out product, four times a year for the past 25 years. END$$