India, Feb. 28 -- You write that scholars have not examined the middlebrow and lowbrow publications featured in Everyday Reading in either English or Hindi. Why is that the case?

I want to emphasise the period I work on - the 1950s and '60s. While there is a rich body of work on popular print culture and periodicals in the 20th century in both Hindi and English, the 1950s often gets lost as a moment of analysis. It's dismissed as a time when the nation is in the making, during which it deserves a pause. And after that, things start happening suddenly. It's like a stepping stone to later decades. The 1950s is also thought of in terms of the Nehruvian mould and nation-building, which rests on the deferral of pleasure. This idea of the 1950...