The Hindu - my favourite newspaper

The Hindu has been my companion for the past 45 years now!

My grandpa's brother (my kunju thatha as we all used to call him) who was blind could never do without asking someone to read out the day's news aloud to him every morning.

I remember, how when I was just 9 years old and on a trip to Anantapur visiting him, was asked to read out the daily newspaper to him. At that age I might have struggled to read English yet I remember I was bold and never bothered about mistakes. What I liked was his own comments after I had read an interesting para from a news item.
(Early on I learnt the fact that if there was one news item there were as many opinions as there were readers reading it!). Even now I read with interest some letters to the editor on a news item just to find out the many viewpoints published on the same topic.

I still remember I was the one to read about Nehruji's death in May of 1964(?) on one of my annual trips to his place and the personal inputs which kunju thatha gave us all about the life and times of Nehruji.

If I can speak, read and write English better than even my own mother tongue Tamil, then its thanks to The Hindu and later on, other weeklies, monthlies which I got used to reading like a second habit.

My mother who is 83 years old reads the newspaper and magazines each and every day without fail. Its just like some divine duty to read something for some hours each day. It becomes a habit and very hard to kick. Yet it is such a wonderful habit that you dont have to have company or feel bored at any point in time if you have something in hand to read!

Recently one of my sisters wrote in a common mail to us, how our maternal grandfather, the Late Sesha Iyer, who migrated from Selvarayan Hills in Yercaud to Secunderabad went in search of a library first, so that he could lay his hands on books there!
He went to learn the local language Telugu and soon began to tutor children in the neighbourhood to earn a living in a new place. That is how enterprising he was. No wonder my mother imbibed his reading habit and we all in our family, from her.

We continue to read something each and every day.

I must confess I love my first cup of piping hot coffee with The Hindu in hand first thing in the morning. I cannot and will not stir out of the chair until I have read through the main and supplement papers. I get restless on the days when the paper is dropped off later than the usual 6.15am!
Unfortunately we women have kitchen work to start, but this habit of catching the day's news means starting my kitchen work a bit later than many who dont read it first thing in the morning. (I envy all the men who are lucky, as they leisurely read what they want, with a loving wife serving coffee and tiffin from time to time. Ah! how I wish I were a man in my next birth).

If I miss reading it early in the morning for some reason I never get an opportunity to pick up the paper and read it during any other time of the day. Also the main paper and the supplements get divorced so soon as the day progresses! So its a compulsive habit at that particular time each day. I miss it most it rains and the delivery boy arrives late or when I am travelling but make up by reading any other available local paper or magazines. Nothing like it.

Twice we were forced by some enterprising salesmen to change to some other newspapers and that too for one year! I missed my Hindu so much that I would go searching for it anywhere during the day just to catch a glimse of at least the headlines in it!
I was waiting for the annual subscription to the other newspapers to get over so that I could switch back to The Hindu.
I have got wiser and turn away these young sales persons trying to convince me to change to any other newspaper in future.

Twice bitten thrice shy :D

Mahalakshmi