Chandamama was a classic Indian monthly magazine for children, famous for its illustrations, publishing mythological/magical stories. It was started in 1947 by Sri B.Nagi Reddy and Sri Chakrapani, noted South Indian Filmmakers.
A couple of generations of kids grew up reading, dreaming and enjoying “Chandamama” children’s magazine, and, its various local language editions like அம்புலிமாமா – of which I was an avid reader and enjoyed reading during my school days.
The magazine house shut shop many years ago, but its past editions from 1948 till 2009 are now available in Internet Archives and from Chandamama dot in (a fan site) as PDFs.
I randomly picked the September 1955 issue and the editorial there caught my attention. You will be surprised at how they saw the arrival of Nuclear Power and the promise of the world with bountiful power.
Chandamama September 1955 editorial
Most often stories involve animals and magic powers
An advertisement for a film roll
A story from the Tamil Edition Ambulimama (அம்புலிமாமா) – யார் தகுந்தவன்?
chandamama.page
Update – 4th Aug 2020: To read the issues online without downloading, check out chandamama.page (another fan site), it has back issues for English, Hindi & Telugu. I learned about this site through a comment posted below for this post! Thanks, Anirudh for sharing.
Update – 1st Oct 2020: Today, there was the sad news of the passing away of the artist behind the illustrations in Chandamama issues – Mr K C Sivasankar, aged 97. He kindled our childhood imagination on how the various mythological characters would’ve looked.
//Hailing from Erode, Sankar or K C Sivasankar illustrated for five decades on varied subjects — but all grounded in Indian culture. For instance, the stories of ‘Vethal’.//
Update – 2023: I came across the link for the past Tamil language issues in Internet Archives and updated this post with the same.
My childhood golden memory’s magazine
Restart chandamamma
Brother, I want to buy Chandamama English edition magazines, please guide me how to buy. thank you
can you send me message on my mobile number 9**** ****7
Thanks for reading my blog. Unfortunately, Chandamama publication has ceased many years ago. You can buy old edition from second-hand shops or ebay like online sites. Good Luck.
I have about 800 old e-magazines of chandamama in English, Malayalam, Hindi and Tamil
How can I reach you? Thanks.
Please upload them
It really is amazing to look back in time to see how people viewed the world and the future! Nice to see these posts which keep Indian storytelling alive, keep up the good work!
I recently launched a Chandamama archival project in 2020: https://chandamama.page
It’s a modern site with over 400 magazine from 13 years. There are multiple languages and it is completely free! I originally created it for my family during covid, but thought that you and your readers might also appreciate it.