Content is being increasingly accessed via the Net and soon the person who insists on getting the hard copy of his newspaper will be an oddity
When I went out to the front gate at quarter-to-seven and found that the morning papers had not arrived, I was only mildly irritated, muttering to myself silently: when will they learn to be on time? This is how the last informal leg — the thin two of the delivery boy to be precise — of a very organised process let the whole endeavour down, I ruminated with a journalist’s slight sense of superiority. Then, as the minutes ticked by, irritation gave way to annoyance and eventually concern.
What on earth could have happened? Surely, there could not have been a power failure through last night at all the newspaper offices. They were not even on the same street as in Delhi where the Emergency had arrived to a paperless, cheerless morning’s unwelcome. At precisely eight o’clock I called the head vendor on his cellphone and asked with a mixture of annoyance and exasperation what on earth had happened. He chuckled softly at having caught me out in my mental disconnect and said, “Sir (they always sir you in the south), the World Cup final ended so late, the papers are all late.” I am glad he could not see the sheepish look on my face.
One reason why I get disturbed when the papers are seriously delayed without apparent reason (it’s different when you are forewarned by a holiday announcement the previous day) is my first memory of such a happening. Both my father and I (freshly back home from boarding school at end of term) were at our front door that winter morning in Kolkata, down from second floor, wondering what had caused the delay. The papers eventually came to tell us that Lal Bahadur Shastri had died in Tashkent after signing the peace agreement with Pakistan to end the 1965 war in which he had so decisively led the nation to victory.
The morning paper was always much more than just a newspaper. Two rites marked your entry into the world of grownups in a middle class Bengali household — your first cup of the day became tea and not milk and you made an awful fuss if you were not granted the right of first sight of the headlines. (There wasn’t very much more to newspapers in those days.) As it happened, one particular newspaper benchmarked my entry and graduation into the world of the Indian economy. Early in my college days, I persuaded my father to buy me the Economic Times (how else could I become a proper economics graduate, I averred) which came from Mumbai and was delivered in the evening. That somehow made it miss the mark of being a proper newspaper (those arrived early in the morning), just as I myself was far from becoming a graduate. Then, over time, the ET came earlier in the day as there were better plane connections with Delhi where it began to print. And finally, the paper came of age in my subconscious when its Kolkata edition was delivered early in the morning as all proper newspapers were. By that time I had started working and in a way both my paper (nobody else in the family cared for it) and I had arrived.
Having grown up in a world in which the newspaper was always delivered at home, I was rather distraught when on landing up in Britain I found that most bought their paper at the tube station while going to work. Getting the paper at home cost a penny more, if I recall right. But I was determined not to let a cherished habit die. So, I paid the extra and had the Times come home to me. As I relished my morning cuppa, I could not decide which was the greater British institution, a good cup of tea or the Thunderer, no matter how muted it had become by the troubled Seventies. Over time I acquired more costly habits — a taste for Dunhill cigarettes, Scotch and the Financial Times, in that order — until I was broke and ready to return home.
About the only negative part of being a journalist has been to see most of the morning paper the night before. The freshness, surprise and charm are partly lost. It is like getting to know your wife to be a bit too well before being formally wedded. There is certainly a bit of the thrill of the exclusive preview but the inky, fresh from the rotary, feeling is also gone. You had to wait to go on annual leave to get back the unique pleasure of discovering the world every morning form the papers.
As with all living things, if there is a sunrise, there has to be a sunset. One of the greatest disappointments that progress has brought is the realisation that one aspect of civilisation, as many of us know and cherish it, is about to go below the horizon. The days of the printed paper, physically delivered with a thud which can be heard in the morning stillness, are numbered. Content is being increasingly accessed via the Net and soon the person who insists on getting the hard copy of his newspaper delivered at his doorstep in the morning will be an oddity. The romance of being able to physically hold and read a newspaper will take its place in the museum, next to the romance of horses and sailing ships.
