The English Press Club sat down with Rama Sundaram, the founder and editor-in-chief of the Cactus Flower magazine, to talk about the history of Cactus Flower and the efforts taken to establish it.

The etymology of the magazine comes from the fact that the flowering of a cactus is an incredibly rare sight in the desert, which the team felt was similar to the idea of compiling a yearbook-like magazine for BITSians. Mr Sundaram took upon himself the task of creating this magazine in 1983, with the initial vision of having pictures and a blurb for each academic department. Once he realised that fourteen departments were not enough to fill a magazine, he also included creative writing entries in the magazine and the first Cactus Flower was born. 

The first edition of the Cactus Flower contained a team of eight people—Rama Sundaram, the editor-in-chief, Prashanth Sagar, senior editor, former General Secretary, and the muscle of the editorial team, Amith Sheth, editor of photography, and Dipankar Goswami, editor of arts and layout among others.

Mr Sundaram described the process of printing the first Cactus Flower as a ‘comprehensive course on crisis management’. The team faced roadblocks at every turn, including funding, maintaining journalistic integrity, collecting content, managing logistics, and building a sustainable foundation. 

The team funded the magazine by giving out full-page ads, known as souvenirs, to various private firms. This method worked out so well that they ended up running a surplus which they then gave to the Students’ Union. 

While trying to maintain journalistic integrity, there were often attempts at strong-arming them by other clubs and bodies who didn’t want anything tarnishing written about them in the magazine. Here, Sundaram gives credit to Prashanth, whom he described as his right-hand man and goalkeeper of the team. Prashanth had a lot of sway over multiple student bodies and was a man of means who ensured that the Cactus Flower never got pushed around by any other organisation. This is also why the first Cactus Flower never had any Hindi publication in it, and why later Vaani, the Hindi literary magazine, joined Cactus Flower side by side. 

In terms of handling the logistics, Sundaram recalled that the paper they ordered from Delhi got stuck in Jaipur because of a massive transport strike. He gives credit to Prashant once again, who drove to Jaipur and brought the paper to Pilani for printing. This being the 1980s, problems like the printing blocks not having enough margins or the blocks cutting out important pieces of information were also things that had to be dealt with. 

For collecting creative works, Sundaram gave credit to all the writers and photographers who worked on the Cactus Flower. He specially mentioned Amit Sheth’s photography and how it was a big help to the magazine. He also thanked his fortune that they managed to have Dipankar Goswami in the team whose brilliant design work—which you can find in the CF archives—made the magazine a work of art. Today, he designs for Sony Pictures in Los Angeles, California. 

Finally, Mr Sundaram talked about how it was extremely necessary to leave behind a succession plan for the magazine to ensure it kept running smoothly. He quoted the example of one incident, years after he passed out, where the entire team consisted only of members of the graduating class, because of which no one following them knew how to run the magazine. This led to a couple of years where the magazine was not published.

Cactus Flower was not the first magazine on campus though. Mr Sundaram also started the Camel Post, whose logo he admittedly copied from the Camel brand of stationery. The Camel Post archives are now in the library, and they talk about issues relevant even today. It was printed on a cyclostyle press and was a small project. Later on, Sundaram’s attention moved away to Cactus Flower and Camel Post was succeeded by the Sandpaper, and then by our very own newsletter, The Fine Print. 

Today while Cactus Flower only publishes creative works in the forms of prose, poems and photographs, it is published alongside Pilani diaries, a yearbook, and Vaani—the Hindi literary magazine. So, in essence, the initial vision of Cactus Flower remains intact and running strong 40 years later.