Confessions of a Newspaper Reader

Millions all over the world are addicted to their morning newspaper, as much as they are to their morning tea. As we savor sipping the cup that cheers, our heads are buried ostrich-like in the folds of the newspaper. We do not relish either intrusion or distraction from anyone. In those moments, I suspect that each though reading the same newspaper is floating on a cloud, which is entirely his own. The same paper means so many different things to different people. A senior citizen, I know, turns to the obituary columns first. He meticulously goes through the endearing epitaphs, penned for those who have already left for the moon on a one-way ticket! He tells me, that when his professional contemporaries and friends give up their mortal coils, the outburst of sorrow and praise for them are not likely to appear on the first page. Hence his obsession with the obituary column! "We are all now birds of passage for a few more days. If at all my name appears, it will only be in these obituary columns", he confided in me. Every time he sees a familiar name or a face in these columns a part of him dies. He realizes that the world he was born in and the people who were a part of his world are fast becoming footnotes in a history book, which would never be written. His obsession with death surprises me, for it comes from a brave veteran aviator who survived a crash, when his plane plunged in the Bay of Bengal, and he swam to safety to the Burmese shore.

Then there are those who just cannot wait to turn to the sports pages. The rest of the newspaper has no meaning for them. For them the world is all about the cricketers' latest girlfriends and their antics. Or tennis star, Sania Mirza doing a catwalk! Not educated in the niceties of the world of sports, I would not shed a tear, if the newspaper would drop these pages altogether. There also seems to be a big misunderstanding. What appear on the 'Sports' pages, to my mind belong correctly to the 'Business' pages, as they are more about multimillion dollar TV rights, celebrity endorsements for pesticide-laced soft drinks and match-fixing. In my school days, Hockey was India's national game and cricket was the 'king of games' played by 'gentlemen in white flannels'! The native kabadis played in our lanes or at the national level were not yet sponsored by mafia-linked business houses.

Then there was my father, a philosopher by profession, who used to curse and could not understand why two pages were wasted on 'those damned figures'. Of course, he was referring to the stock market quotes, shunned by the otherworldly, but studied with a magnifying glass by those who follow every vagary of Wall Street and Dalal Street.

For those who revel in the Machiavellian world of politics, the newspapers have ceased to spring any cloak and dagger surprises in the morning. Blame it on TV! Before we go to bed, the umpteen competing news channels update us by the hour, about the swinging equations between different political factions. Or conjectures about the wily President Musharraf's next googly to his very dear and gullible friend, George Bush. Then, every evening numerous TV chat shows dissect every happening on this earth, in an endeavor to tell us the 'real story behind the story'. Then what is there for me to look forward to, in the next morning's paper? Nothing really, for going through the motions of reading the paper is an addiction I cannot do without. Even if I curse the Times of India for its trivialization and uncalled for titillating content, I still stick to it. Like old wives, it is too late to change! For some mild flirtation, every morning I also look up on the Net the editorials of New York Times, Dawn of Karachi and Shekhar Gupta's incisive articles in the Indian Express. It just gives that extra insight into differing viewpoints and makes me feel global, even if the 'Old Lady of Bori Bunder' - Times of India, would frown on these flirtations.

There is, of course, a sadistic streak in me, which makes me hunt out all news items and scoops on scams, about the way our city is being destroyed by our municipality, hand in glove, with 'reputed' builders, politicians and the bureaucracy. This shoots up my blood pressure, which is not good for my health. I retaliate by writing letters to the Editors, expressing my outrage about the destruction of the city. While some get published, most are consigned to the editor's 'Recycle Bin'. To my knowledge, there is as yet no 'Obituary' column for rejected letters and articles. My next recourse is to look for Laxman's cartoon of the day. His Common Man and I empathize with each other about the misery life is dishing out to us. Then stoically I laugh to myself, and wonder why only misery makes us laugh. Has there been ever a cartoon about something good, which has happened, and has made us laugh? Dark humor about the dark happenings around us, is what makes us chuckle - what an irony of existence!