Helter Skelter: India's Independent Magazine of Alternative Culture

Helter Skelter is an independent online magazine from Mumbai, Maharashtra, publishing in English on alternative and independent culture in India. Launched in June 2010, it covers books, films, theatre, music, art, food and travel through personal essays, social commentary, interviews, features, reviews and photography. It is best known beyond its website for the Helter Skelter Anthology of New Writing, a roughly annual print collection of original fiction, poetry and art from India.

In a media landscape dominated by entertainment publicity and lifestyle marketing, Helter Skelter was founded to write about creative work that sits outside the mainstream — independent musicians, small publishers, graphic novelists, theatre groups, illustrators and writers at the start of their careers. Fifteen years after its launch, under founding editor Arun Kale, it remains one of the early Indian web magazines still publishing on its own terms.

Overview

Helter Skelter describes itself as an online magazine with a focus on independent and alternative culture in India. Its about page lists the scope plainly: films, books, theatre, food, music, art and travel, in forms ranging from personal essays and social commentary to human-interest pieces, interviews, features, reviews and photography. The magazine is published in English and read nationally, and media directories classify it as an online and digital publication with a national scope.

The magazine's structure has two halves. The website publishes articles continuously, while the New Writing initiative and its print anthology discover and publish emerging Indian writers and poets. The anthology gives the digital magazine a physical presence in bookshops and at literary events, and connects the magazine to the community of writers it has published over the years.

History and Founding

Helter Skelter went live in June 2010. In the launch article, editor Arun Kale announced a new online magazine with a strong focus on independent and alternative culture in India — books, films, art, music, food, travel and more — promising new articles twice a week and a section called Noise, updated nearly every day with news, event listings and other material of interest to its readers. The launch set the tone that still defines the magazine: informal, curious and addressed to readers who follow creative scenes closely.

The magazine looked and worked much the same for its first three years. In April 2013 it relaunched with a redesigned website, after the team concluded that the original design and code felt dated and inflexible. The new version was built to be fully mobile- and tablet-friendly, in response to readers increasingly arriving on phones and tablets, with improved typography, wider reading areas and faster response. The relaunch also introduced a new comic strip, The City Speaks, created by Jai Undurti and Harsho Mohan Chattoraj, as part of a larger unfolding story.

Publisher and Ownership

Helter Skelter is an independent publication, run by its founding editor and a small team rather than by a media group. Arun Kale, who signed the launch article in 2010 and the relaunch note in 2013, remains the magazine's public editor. His professional background spans writing, editing, education, graphic design for print and digital media and web development over more than two decades in media — a combination that suited a web-native magazine that had to design, build and edit itself.

Independence shapes the magazine's economics and its editorial choices. The site carries advertising, with published contact points for advertising and for event promotions, and the print anthology is sold through bookstores. Without a corporate parent, the magazine has been free to follow niche subjects — comic-book libraries, independent music releases, small theatre productions — that larger lifestyle publications would consider too small to cover.

Language and Readership

The magazine publishes in English, which connects it to India's urban, English-reading cultural audience and to readers in the Indian diaspora interested in the country's independent scenes. Its subject matter is rooted in Indian cities — their bookshops, gig venues, galleries, cafes and festivals — but its treatment is personal rather than reportorial, favouring the essay and the conversation over the news story.

Readers are also, in many cases, practitioners: writers who submit to the New Writing anthology, musicians and artists who are interviewed, and readers of the magazine's widely shared practical resources, such as its compiled list of places to submit creative writing in India. That list, which documented literary magazines across the subcontinent and noted that Helter Skelter had by then been publishing original short fiction and poetry in its New Writing series for close to three years, shows the magazine acting as infrastructure for a wider literary community, not merely as a publisher of its own content.

Editorial Content and Sections

Helter Skelter's content mixes long-form features with shorter news and listings. The founding structure paired twice-weekly articles with the frequently updated Noise section for news and event listings. Over the years the site has published interviews with novelists, filmmakers, musicians, illustrators and comic creators; essays on cities and their changing cultures; reviews and reading lists; and photography-led pieces.

The range of its interview archive illustrates the editorial taste. Conversations have included bestselling and literary novelists discussing new books, the founders of a comic-book library and cafe in Mumbai, the creators of graphic novel projects, live-storytelling performers, independent musicians launching EPs, and the collective behind a reader-funded anthology of South Asian comics creators. A recurring interest is how creative communities sustain themselves in India — the bookshops, libraries, small presses and venues that make independent culture possible.

The New Writing Anthology

The magazine's most distinctive project is its anthology programme. New Writing is an initiative by Helter Skelter to promote emerging writers and poets in India and to create a space for original, fresh short fiction and poetry. The first volume was published in May 2012, built around a visual cue — a photograph of a telephone with its receiver off the hook — and published fifteen of the best short stories and poems received, along with original artwork inspired by each piece.

The anthology became a roughly annual print volume of original fiction, poetry and art from India. Later volumes were shaped with guest editors and themes: the fifth volume carried a foreword by novelist Anjum Hasan, and the sixth, titled Dissent and edited by Sharon Irani and Arun Kale, gathered stories and poetry exploring what dissent means to their authors. The seventh volume featured original short fiction and poetry from India selected by writers Mridula Koshy and Sumana Roy. For many contributors, the anthology has been a first or early print publication — the same function the magazine praised in older Indian literary journals when it compiled its submissions guide.

Audience and Reach

Helter Skelter's audience is a niche one by design: readers of independent Indian culture, creative professionals, students and aspiring writers. Its influence is visible less in traffic claims — the magazine makes none publicly — than in its longevity, its anthology's presence in independent bookshops, and the careers of writers and artists who passed through its pages. Media databases list it as a verified online outlet with a national scope, and its social channels on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram extend its articles and anthology announcements to followers between publications.

The podcast and literary circuit reflects the same standing. Arun Kale has discussed the magazine, its curation process and the editor's note from its latest volume on literary podcasts, presenting Helter Skelter to audiences of writers as a model of small, independent, editor-led publishing sustained over fifteen years.

Notable Editors and Contributors

Arun Kale is the founding editor and the magazine's continuous editorial presence, with more than fifty articles published under his own name on the site in addition to his editing. His background as a graphic designer and teacher at a French college of graphic design and visual communication informs the magazine's attention to visual culture, comics and illustration.

Around him, the anthology has drawn established literary figures into its orbit: Anjum Hasan wrote a foreword for the fifth volume, Sharon Irani co-edited the sixth, and Mridula Koshy and Sumana Roy selected the seventh. Contributors and interview subjects across the website include graphic storytellers such as Jai Undurti and Harsho Mohan Chattoraj, novelists including Amitabha Bagchi and Anjum Hasan, and a long list of independent musicians, comic creators and small-press publishers — a cross-section of India's alternative creative scene as it has evolved since 2010.

Recent Developments

Helter Skelter continues to publish new articles on its website and to issue its anthology in print, with the seventh volume of New Writing the most recent in the series promoted by the magazine. The about page continues to invite advertising, event promotion partnerships and reader contact, and the magazine maintains active social profiles under its own handles. Its fifteen-year run, from a twice-weekly web magazine launched in 2010 to a combined digital and print anthology publisher, makes it a durable example of India's first generation of independent online cultural magazines.