Multitude of people of older vintage would nod vigorously in agreement with me as to what a supreme pleasure it was to snatch a sheet of that day's newspaper from rampaging siblings and read gleefully. After the father finished with the paper and put it down, the entire household would descend on that bunch of printed sheets as if it was a treasure involved in a veritable battle of partition. There would be a scrap among the children to get hold of the Sports page, specifically. After the initial fighting, things would settle down to a state of relative calm, when the kids read their sheets and then started exchanging with the others, so that at the end of a half-hour period, all the sheets would have become things of the past, really history! Still, no one dared to touch the paper till the father had slowly consumed all the news, along with his morning cuppa, at first. Even when he was reading the English newspaper `The Hindu', the Thamizh paper `Dhinamani' would sit invitingly there untouched, waiting for its turn, just as we all waited for our turn.
At that time none of us realised what was happening. We were unconsciously cultivating the venerable habit of reading newspapers. Which will grow in intensity with us and survive to aggressively compete with all the other news peddling media like radio at first and then TV, online channels and of course, born gossipers in our midst of whom there was and is never any dearth. Our territory was part of the backwaters, where English Literature courses were taught partly in Thamizh (!!), Eentirely due to the students' inability to grasp the foreign language well, let me hasten to clarify, lest our Literature gurus curse me from afar. A lot of us owe whatever initial proficiency we had developed in English language to the newspapers, magazines like Sport and Pastime and radio commentary on cricket, tennis matches and events, Radio news and the like. There have been times in our later lives, when we were either travelling for an extended period overseas or were on foreign assignments. Apart from badly missing our kith and kin, two major things we longed for were home food and Indian newspapers. To such an extent that we earnestly cultivated friendships with Air India personnel in our locations and asked them to retrieve for us, the newspapers given to the passengers on flights and avidly read news which was at a minmum 3 days old!!
The story of how the newspapers reached our thresholds daily during our childhood days was also something very captivating. The papers were printed at Madurai or arrived there by the first flight from Madras. They were hurriedly bundled into waiting private taxis doing this `paper-trip' daily, even before too much sunlight seeped into the world. The taxis covered the distance of about 150 kms to Thuthukudi in about 3 hours in champion ambassador cars, with top notch maintenance all round the year. Because if there was ever a delay, Thuthukudi's entire paper-reading public would be up in arms, demanding someone's head for the lapse which prevented them from getting their daily staple in time! Even though there were other newspapers which were printed in nearby locations and delivered earlier, the demand was only for the abovementioned papers + The Indian Express, in most households. The maharathi drivers of those Madurai-Thuthukudi paper-run taxis were real-life heroes for most of us in childhood for the daredevilry embedded in their driving throughout the year.
Now, cut-over to the present day. While the newspaper reading habit is not exactly dying or moribund, it seems to have shrunk drastically overall. Many old timers have also chosen to discard the newspaper habit because it is a redunduncy in the age of mobile phones, which provide more up-to-date news. Youngsters, of course, never even begin their association with newspapers, with exceptions of course, because the reading habit is not very appealing to them, outside of the screens they perpetually peer into. So generally, it has become fashionable to look down into your mobile phone/tablet with crinkled eyes for news, rather than read a newspaper relaxedly, for the majority. Children fighting to grab sheets of newspapers to read, as was the practice with us, is no longer a common sight nowadays, surely. Probably also because most households have ceased buying newspapers daily - not required and a waste of money!
For those who are still sticking to the old-world habit of buying newspapers and reading them, the reasons could be very real or imaginary. Absolutely no doubt, there is a huge element of nostalgia in the whole experience. They like the touch-and-feel type of experience everywhere, be it the newspapers or shopping. This group is very unlikely to order on-line for items which require sensory perception to be experienced, like clothes. The very unique smell of the fresh newspaper sheets, the joy of scanning the paper from top left to bottom right, covering all the columns, the pleasure of seeing the name of a village, town, enterprise or people one was associated with long back, included as part of a news item -- these are enough for the inveterate newspaper readers to pursue the habit for ever. You cannot substitute these small pleasures by watching TV or going online always. Having said that, there are novel challenges to the enthusiasts now, to maintain their composure and love for the paper, despite what can only be seen as irritants and provocations.
Those into newspapers would not have missed the thin strip of extra paper sticking out on the side (how can they?), with some printed ad, raking a bit more money for the publisher. For some reason, this innocuous intrusion causes distinct angst in avid readers. They first want to tear that stip off, from top to bottom and bring the newspaper to the `normal' shape and size before starting perusal. But stripping that piece off is not very easy because once you start, the tear veers off into the paper and a small portion of the actual news is also lost sometimes. More irritation!! The damage being done, people can only look at the unevenly torn page and do some cluck-clucking, while cursing the publisher wholeheartedly.
A sizable number of newspaper lovers are probably in the over-50 quadrant. That means most of them also sport spectacles, perched gingerly on their noses while peering at the paper. When the fonts used by the publishers gradually reduce in size and sometimes necessitate a magnifying glass to decipher what is printed, it is distressing. The least publishers can do is to ensure that news is readable by an average person, even with specs by sticking to a decent size font. But, the smaller font, the more space they get for moolah thru ads, so that is that. So, most old people keep their specs on and also have a magnifying glass handy to ensure that they do not miss anything -- that is what the they buy papers for, right?
Another stupid mistake publishers make is printing news items in colour (who is asking for this?), choosing the colours indiscriminately without any thought for the readers. Try reading anything printed in green against red background, or dark blue against black and the like. Publishers know the readers are probably on the older side, so why frustrate them with such a punishment? Do all the colourful gimmickry with the ads, which appeal to youngsters, but the reading material should be printed in conventional fonts and colours so that the older generation feels comfortable and satisfied.
The worst grouse we have is that while there are 10 pages of news, there are 50 pages of Akshaya Trithya ads + 20 pages of property ads + 50 more pages of assorted furniture, biriyani, restaurants ads. People like me are glad that there are pull-outs most of the time for ads and related material. We can comfortably just ignore that. But when ads are constantly mixed up with news on every page, that is a major intrusion which cannot be condoned easily. Avoidable, that is. Reel in all the ad revenues you want, publisher, but keep the ads as separate pull outs or at least on separate pages. Those who are interested are most welcome to read the ads only and throw the news, while we will be happy to do the reverse. We too deserve some attention; after all we pay for the newspapers; not getting them free!!
My dear wife is going through her leisurely read of to-day's newspaper and decreeing that there should be some authorised proportion of ads to news for everyone and all in the form of pull-outs. And there should be a serious Ombudsman to oversee compliance. She is on our side!!
