Tere binaa Jiyaa nahin jaaye. Review on Newspaper Addiction

I am not sure if I am equipped to write about this since this topic would need a fair amount of objectivity and a bias free mind and since I am the culprit here(my Mom would vouch for that), I might give you a pretty skewed picture of whether newspaper addiction is good or bad.

Having said that, let me elaborate on what I think of addiction in the first place. Though the word addiction assumes a negative connotation, the Webster meaning of the word?addict(verb)? is given as, ?to devote or surrender oneself habitually and excessively to?. So if I go strictly by this, I can definitely be accused of being an addict.

Now there could be umpteen reasons as to why one has to resort to reading a newspaper while your Mom calls out your name for the penultimate time before you get a glare not just from your Mom but everybody waiting for you at the dining table.

Some of the reasons could be:-

1) You do not belong to the early bird speciesas a result of which, as a kid by the time you would get up, most of your family members have had their breakfast and are off to work. To avoid boredom, you start reading a newspaper having a cup of filter coffee and toast at the same time. Ok those of you who are trying to visualize me doing all three simultaneously, I am no juggler. I mean having a cup of coffee and toast by your side.

So over a period of time, you developed this habit of reading newspapers right after you have attended the nature?s call. Or before. Err?Lets leave it at that. Moreover a lot of you might question whether its correct to not belong to this set of early birds. Well for them may I tell you that we always talk about the early bird getting the worm ever thought about the poor ealry worm?

Many of us start the day by reading TOI or the Hindu discussing the implications of Oil crisis about to unfold or forecasting the results of the Kerry-Bush tussle or the intellectually stimulated ones might start contemplating whether Bipasha could ever get the HRD ministry portfolio. And all of such entertaining moments can be attributed to your reading the newspaper.

Just think about it. Would you have such awe-inspiring bouts of creative intellect had you not been reading about them in the newspapers?

2) You need to do this simply to stay informed. Not that?s what I call a brilliant excuse. While my elder sisters would get away by saying that they need to know what?s going on, I would be accused of not doing anything constructive and getting glued to the newspaper. Now my Mom has taken to their strategy and I am considered the innocent one when it comes to newspaper addiction.

3) You need camouflagingvery often after you have dropped a glass vase or forgotten to finish some errands at home. Instead of resorting to a newspaper right after committing such blunders, its better to have such an addiction for your paper will a loyal friend under such circumstances.

4) Page 3 addiction

I personally find Page 3 a total waste of time and have no interest whatsoever in finding out whether so and so model smiled or winked at so and so designer at such and such party, a lot of newspaper loyalists do read papers out of this compulsive page 3 syndrome.

5) Kekta Kapoor

Whenever you have the mangalsutra brigade going particularly strong(that could happen if some central character of the serial gets to know about her husband?s illicit exploits or if there is a new husband post makeover), the perfect remedy is to read either some old article which you have wanted to read for the past few days. If caught doing so which in the eyes of others, is sacrilege, you could tell them about the latest exhibition-cum-sale at such and such place offering such and such discounts. If you couldn?t find that out, God save you.

6) Internet connection failure

For obvious reasons, since you are likely to be a net freak as well. And whenever your net connection goes for a toss and you are looking for some text somewhere. As it is, I do not read newspapers online simply because I enjoy reading the hard copy out of habit.

7) Bestsellers

This is for compulsive readers like me who get palpitation whenever there is no reading material at home.Now what do you do if you want to read the latest bestseller but it happens to be obscenely expensive right now? Wait for sometime; read the lousiest article in the newspaper hoping that the book would prominently feature on Fountain shelves soon.

Now there are several advantages to being a newspaper addict. For one, you stay informed and can quote figures and statements and bombard your boss with info left right and centre right after he ahs seen you dozing off on your seat post lunch. Secondly and that?s purely incidental, you get to know how ignorant you have been about the world?s ways.

Lastly, I could have told you that I am an addict because I believe ignorance leads to darkness or some such quote and I do this to attain knowledge of every sort, but you start snoring right then and not rate my review thereafter. Not that many haven?t started snoring and cursing me for wasting their valuable time though.

Thanks for reading my review. Kindly proceed to comments.

Keerti