The Newspaper

This morning , I opened the door and looked for the newspaper . It had not been delivered.The newspaper boy is always late on Sundays.I went inside and sat on my couch. My thoughts raced back to my days in Bombay.

In the wee hours of the morning , I had seen through half open eyes, the newspaper come whizzing and land on the balcony right in front of the door.I must have been six or seven then. I began to admire this expertise of the newspaper boy years later. The minute the paper landed at the door there was a pouncing movement from my brothers. They'd pull each other,roll over each other.... to be the first to grab the paper.One long stare from Achan(Dad) and Chettan(elder brother) would hand the paper to him but not before extracting the sports page from it. Then both my brothers would browse through the previous day's cricket scores. The names 'Gavaskar' and "Vishwanath' sounded familiar to me later when I began to follow Cricket.
My interest ,those days ,were in the comic section. 'Bringing up father' , that featured in the paper we bought those days ,was my favourite .

From here I learnt that the stick used to make chapathis was called rolling pin and Maggie used it often to strike Mr.Jiggs on his head.
From the age of twelve or thirteen, I began to read the front page headlines and the editorial. In my later teens I took more interest in the entertainment and fashion news.Page-3 became a passion.I read without fail ,in the Sunday paper,the astrologer's prediction for the week.and the rest of the day I tried to solve the crossword (These days,it is the Su do ku.)
The only reading material we had at hand was the newspaper and it was mercilessly passed from one hand to the other.My uncle needed the paper when he felt the pressure build and with the paper under his arm he would rush to the toilet as if the news he gathered from the paper inspired him to download to satisfaction. I hesitated to take the paper from him when he returned.

These days ,I often hear my hubby askng my son "Did u read the paper?"and the answer is,as expected,in the negative. He has already heard the TV news and has been updated on the happenings and hence doesn't think it necessary. Anyway, to avoid listening to another long speech from his dad,he hastily goes through the paper ,merely to please his father.

So now we don't have a tug-of-war for the paper at home . There are mornings when the newspaper has to wait for long to be picked .Achan, who now stays with me , is in no hurry to read the paper either. He has his bath and then a sumptuous breakfast before he settles in his easy chair with the news paper.Comic,Sports,Politics,Entertainment seem uninteresting as he flips through the pages after glancing through them and focusses his attention on the obituary column,scanning and searching for familiar faces and names...

How the focus of interest has changed with age !