Black and white and read all over

I don’t know about you, but in my opinion one of the most distinct things about a person is the way they read their morning newspaper.

This thought occurred to me recently when I was having breakfast with my mother early one morning.

My mother is a newspaper junkie — she gets every newspaper I can think of — and she spends all morning going through every line of every page meticulously.

But that’s not what struck me. What fascinated me about her method was that before embarking on every newspaper, my mother would gather up the numerous supplements that came along with it — the business, film, party and other sections — and CLIP — she would staple them together. Only then would she begin the process of reading.

Now for some one who works in newspapers and knows a little about the arduous process of defining newspapers, branding each part of them, printing them, and circulating them, this little gesture of CLIP, that my mother utilised to enable her in her newspaper habit each morning subverted a whole industry of newspaper producing, and negated the work of so many professionals who had thought so deeply about the subject.

CLIP and the newspaper became an entirely new proposition than what its creators intended!

Which reminded me of a friend’s grandfather, who also had a novel approach to newspaper reading. This doughty old man would read every line of every page of his favourite paper like he had been doing regularly for seventy years. But you know what he would do after every line he’d read? He’d cancel it out with a ballpoint pen! This he explained was so that he didn’t re-read it by mistake.

Re-reading a newspaper by mistake can have disastrous consequences. When I lived in Kolkota I used to get the local papers as well as one from Delhi that came in a day late. And so on a number of mornings, forgetting it was yesterday’s paper I’d be horrified to read about the same accident or air crash two days running. “What? Another train accident in the same place again?” is what I would say on many occasions.

Some people like to read newspapers in an orderly fashion, they hold both sections out like a fan in front of them, and their arms spread out importantly. Others fold the paper once, still others fold it twice — but the types I like the best are those who fold the paper thrice — make a neat little packet of it, focusing on the small sections they need to at a time.

Yes sir, there are as many ways of reading a newspaper as there are people.
Which way do you read yours?

s_malavika@dnaindia.net