There is our reading of nearly forgotten journals and news reports, the enlightening manifestations of it, that we miss these days.

Recall the times when newspapers used to be sheer joy with all those cartoons, political as well as social, that would be a demonstration of creative thinking placed before readers by editors and others on the staff of newspapers. Well, cartoons are gone, at least in the newspapers we happen to read here at home.

Why are cartoons important? Because in succinct language they draw public attention to the issues of the day.

They mock as well as lambast the powerful, in humour laden with seriousness, which is another way of saying that what a news item may convey in so many paragraphs is what a cartoonist does better: he frames public sentiments in a simply witty but profound sentence through his sketch and brevity of expression.

In these days of instant news on mobile phones and what have you, the charm which one used to derive from reading newspapers in the past is woefully absent. Let the mind dwell on a front page item we once knew as ‘From the gallery’. It was a presentation of the lighter moments which brought out the human side in ministers and lawmakers as they spoke in parliament.

That too is gone, and not just in our country. Could it be a sign of humour steadily going out of politics? Of politicians unwilling or unable to exchange barbs and engage in repartee in light-hearted manner?

Or could it be that newspapers in these mundane times do not have journalists qualified or bold enough to dash off items which reflect wit as a weapon wielded in parliament by politicians? Or might there be the fear among newspaper establishments that cartoons or a resort to humour might ruffle feathers and land newspapers as well as working journalists in trouble?

Life is not always about dry deliberations on policies, for when humour is injected into politics or when journalists notice the frailties in politicians, the seriousness gets to be properly noticed by readers. Humour is a way of highlighting the serious in our otherwise banal existence.

There are many other aspects of journalism which we — and by that we mean people around the world — have lost over the years. The recent demise of Reader’s Digest, which legions of readers grew up reading and learning from, slams the door on an era where the workings of the mind were a regular exercise in drawing ideas from the multifaceted articles the journal regularly carried.

The sections on laughter, on vocabulary and on real life stories were intellectual weapons that assisted many into an appreciation of good writing. Tens of thousands of young people were able to hone their skills in English language writing through reading Reader’s Digest.

Lest we forget, ages ago we lost Life magazine. The death of the journal left a good number of readers in quite a bit of depression, for the good reason that the write-ups and photographs in Life were symbolic but purposeful representations of human experience that it covered with indefatigable regularity.

In our homes we were careful in ensuring that copies of Life were well preserved, for they were not only a treasure but also points of reference we might need to consult in future. Life went away, nevertheless. Memories of its passing yet cause a painful tug at the heart.

Quite some years ago, another pillar of journalism came crashing down when Newsweek suspended publication.

In the years in which it made its way to readers’ doors around the world, it was read avidly for the global issues it handled every week through its news reports and commentaries. It was a weekly that necessarily made readers go through it all the way from beginning to end.

Newsweek was a lesson in politics and international relations for those of us who were keen to understand geopolitics and shape our responses to the issues in our own independent way. When Newsweek ceased publication, it was a vacuum that it left behind. The vacuum has not been filled.

The Illustrated Weekly of India, a journal once edited by the brilliant Khushwant Singh, was a joy to read in the years in which it came to us on a regular basis. At a time when the Internet was yet to be, IWI offered excellent insights into politics in India as also Indian society as a whole.

The journal folded many years ago and we have all lived with memories of all the richness that came our way from our reading of it. A good number of journals have meanwhile made an appearance in India, notably Open magazine, but the appeal of IWI has not quite been matched.

All beauty is fleeting, even in the media. The weekly magazine Herald, once part of Pakistan’s Dawn newspaper, was closed down some years ago. It had been read by generations of people since the early 1970s, for its contents included write-ups on political leaders, the showbiz world and global affairs.

TIME magazine is yet in circulation, but the gravitas which underpinned it in earlier decades, notably its country-specific reports, is no more there. Apart from its Person of the Year issue, it nowadays focuses on subjects intended to draw the attention of the young. Its cover stories, once explorations of serious affairs and political personalities, nowadays are devoted to such issues as Next Generation Leaders and similar subjects.

In Bangladesh we miss Bichitra, a journal which once was the epitome of purposeful journalism in the country. Led by an enlightened group of individuals, it emphasised the various aspects of society and politics in the country. There was too Khoborer Kagoj, with a treasury of columns from some of the leading writers and thinkers of the country.

And one journal, a quarterly which covered such a diverse range of subjects as plants, trees, science, music and birds, folded with the unexpected and therefore tragic passing of the force behind it, its editor and publisher. Mizanur Rahman-er Troimashik Potrika was a joy to read, for Mizanur Rahman’s life was indeed the journal.

For those of us who were young at the time, he was the journalist whose conscience was complemented by commitment in his work.

And Sputnik, the glossy journal of substance that used to come our way from the cultural wing of the Soviet embassy in Dhaka? It was the beauty of socialism which appealed to us — and many among us have remained loyal to the idea of socialism being the road to happiness for all despite the collapse of communism — through the ideas shining through the journal.

Beauty passes. The clouds go by. The world ages. The universe goes on expanding.

Through all these moving times, it is the charm, the seductive power of vanished reading materials that we have recalled. The twilight approaches us, even as we feel the smell of the pages we turned ages ago, the world we glimpsed in the journals now lost to time. 

Those journals made us think, made us imagine the intellectual universe we needed to explore and discover through the words and phrases and images they placed on the table before us.

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Syed Badrul Ahsan writes on politics, diplomacy and history