Letter to Newspaper

And here we are, writing one to you, after all that genuine hatred and gradual dismissive attitude later. It is memorable how our relationship began. Back in class two, when someone got the chance to read her poem out to the entire class. That is when I came to know you exist. Yes, my parents have too, always, somehow, shunned you -- we have never been much of a well-read family. I had returned home from school and asked my mother why couldn't my name come in the newspaper? She laughed and said that well, definitely I needed to write for that. And so, even without changing out of my uniform, I wrote The Talkative Girl. She was taken aback, it was complete with rhymes and the shizz. We sent it to The Assam Tribune and it not just got published, but was accompanied by a wonderful illustration which increased its readership. And at school and in my class I became quite a name. Class two.

So you found a place in my almirah which held all my junk favourites -- diaries, notebooks, colours, pieces of paper, files --till a great age. But I still couldn't make myself commit to a daily dose of you. At one point, once in Calcutta and with Dadubhai, I forced myself to read through Calcutta Times for all the gossip, and sometimes look through the sports page. At the one relation which held me for about five years, the household had four newspapers coming in -- Anandabazar Patrika, The Times of India, Economic Times and Bartaman. You were the bigger and heavier attention receiver in the meager mornings. You were the bigger and heavier space consumer of my colour-keeping area. You were simply more important. You educated, you made them aware, conscious, updated and fed on their habits. You did everything possible that I couldn't. I hated you.

I hate you still. You spoil mornings with sadness and anxiety, and sensationalize private occasions of public faces and intensely creep into family time. You behave as if not having a relationship with you means the end of the world. I have disowned you happily, and would like to continue it thus. For one month when I had The Statesman I would often form a mishap in my routine because I could not end reading you up. Pending stacks of you choked me. Once the advertisement was out, my first action was to stop having you around.

 

I subscribe to a more spaced out morning with my tea and talks and I am glad you do not inhabit my domestic peace and space. I never made it to the news, perhaps because I was never newspaper material. One day I might be able to convince the world that it can be without you. That day you will know how much I wanted those mornings to work and how much an impediment you were.

Mornings are made in exchanging lines, not in headlines.

K.