How I wait to hear the ‘thud’ of the rolled bundle falling on my floor! A few minutes late and there I will be perched on the railing, waiting eagerly to catch a glimpse of the delivery boys’ bicycles turning the corner towards my house. It sure looks fantastic. With large bundles tied on their handles and carriers laden with another, the bicycles swim into my lane. The satchel on their handle bars holds some more, the rolled ones. The practised fingers nimbly pick the exact newspaper from the bundles or the satchel, depending on whether they are to be delivered to a ground floor verandah or to an upper floor terrace and, the dexterous arm akin to an Olympian javelin-thrower’s, sends it whizzing to the desired spot. All in one seamless action!
I am a confirmed newspaper addict. Without it the morning seems bland, the morning tea insipid, and the day morose. They may have been the mornings of a remote town, Sakti in Chhattisgarh, or a non-descript railway station where my train happened to stop during some journey, the Heathrow airport where the flight to the United States had a stopover, or the cities in the U.S. where I have had short sojourns, I have gone all out in search for a newspaper. Yes, the printed version, which one can feel and smell and hold in one’s hands. Having had one, I flip and cursorily make a mental note of the choicest and juiciest topics, and then lay it down on the lap to savour them all. It’s chewed and digested, in the celebrated words of Francis Bacon. I even deliberately leave some of the articles unread for the next day, if the newspaper is not to be available that day on account of a press holiday. I cannot let my morning tea to be tasteless!
It wasn’t so in the beginning. Those were the days when we children were asked to read newspapers to improve both our language and knowledge, and it was a reluctant compliance of course. The comic strip, the sports page and, the weekly children’s page were the initial hook-ups. The graduation to the editorial and op-ed pages took some years and the preparation for the civil services exam made it a staple. The newspapers then catered to all age groups. They were meant to be read and not merely seen as some of them are now. Page 3 wasn’t an adjective then. It was just another page in a daily, which usually carried local news. While our teachers and parents insisted that we read the newspapers, today I dread asking my kids to do that. Not only have many of the well-known newspapers stopped having exclusive kids’ space on their sheets, some of them have gone ahead to make a blatant display of patent adult stuff in the name of life style articles.
‘But why is mine so late today?’, I grumble, careening myself as if I would be able to see beyond the bend in the road. Well, maybe some newspaper might have reached the distribution centre late or may be his cycle-tyre got punctured. I suddenly realise that he must have left his home at the crack of dawn to be there at the newspaper sorting spot. The foggiest morning of a crippling winter or a monsoonal one raining hailstones, makes no difference to his schedule. So, while we in our blankets lie warmly ensconced in dreams, he is out there loading grim realities onto his handle bar. He cycles dripping wet to get our newspaper dry and crisp as a papadum . I realise that this drudgery is to supplement his paltry income from some low-paid job the rest of the day, or to meet his requirement for an academic pursuit.
I espy my paperwallah shooting newspaper missiles, bang on target, onto specific balconies and porches, as he speedily cycles towards my house. My reverie breaks. I move a bit back from my perch, take a stance à la Jonty Rhodes and focus my attention to catch the roll of newspapers hurled from below.
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