Newspaper

It lands in the flower pot on your balcony with a thud, creeps inside from under the door or waits patiently for your attention in the garden. The first guest in the house is most welcome and sets you in motion with the world. It is also one of those things which are more prominent in their absence than their presence in mundane life. BUT, you love to own your copy everyday and feel envy if your neighbor is luckier to get his print the day your vendor goes missing.

What is more profound is the bond this inanimate thing develops with your age. I still remember in my childhood how I kept pondering about the biased and undivided attention with which my father use to scan the newspaper through his reading glasses page by page and then also carried the same to his toilet. Now I can successfully coin a newspaper theorem which says “The quantum of time spent with newspaper is directly proportional to your age”.

Beyond this, it is also blessed with an opportunity to catch you earliest in the morning, when your mind and thoughts are supple and open to all imaginations this story teller throws at you. And then there is an immense dependence which your body is used to enjoy so innocuously, everyday. I think all our senses love to flirt with it in the most explicit manner and then ardent readers can also swear about the chemical reactions it evokes in their bowels with that cup of tea which one likes to savor, smelling the pristine aroma of an unread newspaper.

Ever wondered the minuscule fraction of our daily spends we pay for this priceless affair! I think it is one of the cheapest and valuable buys today. India, as a country would have enjoyed this experiential meditation more collectively had our literacy rate been higher than the west. Never the less it is all in this newspaper only which can generate huge charity funds to help our scam torn government to spread the power of education. All of us, as an individual seek for at least one meaningful act of charity in an year where we think of doing anything beyond planning but fail to drive that plan because life keeps us occupied in ourselves.

So let us allow the idea to spring up in action. Somebody good in mathematics may please calculate the amount of money we can collect for spreading education in this country by simply collecting this newspaper once in a month from all possible households and donating it in the education relief fund of my NGO ( to be starting very soon). We can surely do away with screaming Kabadiwalas for a noble cause and my limited power of summation tells me the money collected from each society will be huge. If all goes well India will have it’s times soon and we would proudly say together “The Time Of India”