newspaper.

newspapers.

the first time i must have became aware aware of a newspaper, should be when i was in the second standard...i had heard the running commentary of an India-West Indies match in the early 70s( along with my bro and an uncle interested in cricket) which had ended in a fight on the stadium (or was it the radio news?), and was surprised that the huge piece of paper sticking on the door,every day narrated the whole thing again, but this time in black and white.

after that, i think, i started looking at newspapers seriously( other than Laxman cartoons most of which i understood nothing except the expressions on the faces of the common man and his wife), only when Times of India started the Sunday Times.

it was around my teens they started the supplement every Sunday....and it suited me well.. feminist Shoba De( khilachand in those days), fashion,food by Kajal Anand (I think)..i used to devour each article, like there was no tomorrow.

the person who put an end to my newspaper reading habits, was my mom..

good girls who have to get married and go to other people's houses, don't cross their legs with a newspaper the first thing in the morning..they get the tea and breakfasts ready..they have the whole day after that to read the newspaper, is the news different,does it change, if u read it in the afternoon? .her ferocious nagging finally got to me and i stopped pouncing on the newspaper the minute the door bell rang. somehow it jarred terribly that i got to read the paper second hand..rather third hand...after dad and bro were through with devouring it. (esp, when both of them woke a cool two hours after me).

I became a rebel with a worthless cause, and stopped reading newspapers altogether..i was fine without them i said, and seriously i was, still am.....the habit has still persisted. 
no doubt, when they started Mumbai Mirror and Bombay Times, i was redrawn to it initially..but it was never became an addiction like it was before.

mine, I can proudly proclaim, is a world without newspapers.

Over the years, i have often found my male colleagues, passing snide remarks on their wives who just wont read a newspaper. we women are not encouraged to read them i protest..in fact we are actively discouraged i offer.

but u read the Bombay Times..they smirk.

So, do u want us to stop that too? i snarl back.

One of my colleagues proudly proclaimed to me that his wife always read the newspaper back to back, even if was the last thing she did before going to bed.

why? why does she read it last?, i ask, isnt it because, u men want to hog over it in the mornings, while she is sweating it out in the kitchen to make ur breakfast and lunches before rushing to catch her local to her workplace???

i think its time women should start rebelling against the man's rights of having a newspaper first thing in the morning...let them make us the breakfast while we devour the gossip around the world..

Heil Woman.