But the magic that Khilona and Co exercised on their adolescent imaginations, remains unforgettable. Today, an assortment of adults — most veering dangerously towards middle and old age — continue to seek out Khilona monthly from raddi shops in every city.
Other kid’s Urdu magazines of the undivided Punjab and India include — Prem, Bachchon ka Akhbar Honhar, Phool, Shagoofa, Gehwara, Tohfa, etc. (all from Lahore), Konpal, (Karachi), Masum (Layalpur) besides others have also vanished.
“The craze for Khilona is keener among the older bunch,” says Shahid-ur-Rehman, owner of Kutb Khana-e-Rahimiya at Urdu Bazaar, adding smugly that the old magazines always sell “at a premium”. When the publishing house stopped its publication, readers became collectors of the glorious magazine. What I — and 100s of other Urdu lovers like me — are in search of, is a brand that was once a household name in the comity of children’s Urdu monthlies — Mahnama Khilona!
Khilona, a treasure trove of Urdu culture and heritage had carved its niche in the hearts of both elders as well as kids. It was full of umpteen readable stories, poems, cartoons and cartoon strips, comics like Suraj ka Bahadur Beta Shamsi, Hamarey Naam (readers’ letters), Batao to Bhala (riddles), Muskurahatein (jokes), Tumhara Khat Mila (readers’ queries slot), Nanhi Munni Kahaniyan (a column for young writers), Hamara Akhbar (newspaper clippings) and lot more. Ilyas Dehlvi, the editor, titled the editorial page as Apni Batein.
Having been reminded of Khilona, one can only recite these magical lines of that melodious Hindi song — Koi lauta dey merey bitey huey din!
There are some people (like the author) who have retained the old issues of Khilona, while some refuse to tell anyone about their collections, preferring to stash them away in trunks and suitcases. Then, there is the other lot that believes in trading Khilona issues with fellow collectors.
Quips Aziz Burney, joint editor of the Urdu daily Rashtriya Sahara, who reads Khilona to relieve stress, “You escape back into your childhood when you didn't have a care in the world.”
Renowned Urdu poets and writers of the time like — Khwaja Ahmed Abbas, Hafeez Jalandhari, Hasrat Jaipuri, Qateel Shifai, Ismat Chughtai, Salam Machhli Shehri, Razia Sajjad Zaheer, Krishan Chander, Raja Mehdi Ali Khan, Balwant Singh, Kanhaiya Lal Kapoor, Ram Pal, Sahir Ludhianavi, Ram Lal, Siraj Anwar, Basheshar Pradeep, Shafiuddin Naiyar, Kaif Ahmed Siddiqui, Dr Kewal Dhir, KP Saxena, Azhar Afsar, Prakash Pandit, Aadil Rasheed, MM Rajinder, Jilani Bano, Naresh Kumar Shad, Abrar Mohsin, Masooda Hayat, Ishrat Rehmani, Abrar Mohsin, Khaliq Anjum Ashrafi — besides many others used to be household names during those golden and flavoured childhood days.
I still feel nostalgic of each month’s first day that used to be like the Eid day for me as I got Khilona wrapped with the English newspaper, The Statesman, delivered by our elderly bearded newspaperwala — Saleem.
Khilona was published by the Shama publishing corporate. Not only was Shama the most highly regarded literary monthly of India and Pakistan but it was also a fact that almost all the big actors and actresses of yore used to frequent the huge palatial mansion of the Dehlvi brothers namely — Yunus Dehlvi, Ilyas Dehlvi and Idrees Dehlvi. In fact it was their father Yusuf Dehlvi who firmly cemented his reputation as an Urdu publisher at his Asif Ali Road, New Delhi’s huge first floor office known as Shama Building just after Partition.
The price of the magazine used to be only 50 paisa that in the late 60s rose to 62 paise and in the 80s increased to 75 paise. Some time in 1987, the glorious tradition came to an end owing to the dwindling population of Urdu loving kids and the rift in the Shama family. The February issue of Khilona used to be a Salnama (annual). The cost of the 168-page annual issue was two rupees and 50 paise.
The artists’ team that decorated the scintillating Khilona from cover to cover, was headed by the inimitable Siddiqui Artist, who people vouch would have been the best children’s books’ illustrator had he been in an English or French publication agency. The others who were equally remarkable were Jagdish Pankaj, Zia Faizi and Ghayasuddin.
The Khilona Book Depot brought out cute little bubbly storybooks for kids that were so popular that children used to get these registered in advance in the street libraries for ek anna (six paise) and later ten paise per day.
That was a time that had libraries of Urdu books everywhere in the whole of Shahjahanabad. Some of these lovely titles were: Chand Shehzadi, Gauhar Pari, Mano ke karnamey, Ghasita ki Bhutnashahi, Sheikh Chilli ki Kahanian, Langri Kitab, Bhooton ka Khazana, Kala Chor, Udta Pahad, besides many others.
Extremely popular children’s novels like Khaufnak Jazira, Kali Dinia, Neeli Dunia (all by Siraj Anwar), Sitaron ke Qaidi (by Zafar Payami), Hamara Ghar, Chidyon ki Alif Laila (both by Krishan Chander), were also published by Khilona Book Depot after these got serialised each month in the magazine. The price of the smaller storybooks ranged between 19 paise to 45 paise and the novels ranged between two rupees to five rupees. What a wonder era that was!
The Khilona lovers — 70-year-old Shamim Hanafi, an Urdu professor, who spends much of his free time rummaging through raddi shops and roadside booksellers; 50-year-old Atyab Siddiqui, a lawyer whose eyes turn wistful as he recollects the distinctive smell of the magazine; an Iqbal Alam from Moradabad; from Karachi, one Mona Ahmed; a Fakhr-un-Nisa from Kolkata and a Ruqaiya Khatoon from Gaya — all aver that Khilona and Khilona Book Depot books bring back the joy of their childhood days, “right from the feel of those pages to the sheer pleasure of being lost in the story”. The playful Khilona will never die.