For some of us, starting the day without reading a newspaper is like drinking a cup of tea that has turned cold or eating food without salt. It has become so much part of our system that its absence, even for a day, makes us feel disoriented, disconnected and disappointed, to say the least. Without a morning scan of the newspaper is like being in a room with no doors and not knowing what’s happening outside. When we have an uninterrupted supply of something day in and day out, we tend to take it for granted and seem to miss it only when it is not there. The absence of the newspaper is one such thing.
A newspaper is something alive, it is current and happening. Like the one-time passwords, it has a short lifespan of only one day. The previous day’s paper would have already become ‘old hat’ by the next day. To create this ‘one day’ miracle, a bunch of committed people have to work till unearthly hours, sometimes for several days, to finish their work before the deadline so it can come out in print and be delivered at our doorstep even before we wake up. Since we see only the finished product little do we realise the hair-splitting effort behind it.
If the reader is also a contributor of writings then God help the newspaper! Besides going through the volumes of submissions sent by ‘eager beavers’ who would like to see their writings the very next day if possible, they have the voluminous editing to make sense of the written stuff and do the balancing act of publishing them. These ‘writers’ are the early birds who grab the newspaper to see if their names have come in some column or the other or not. It is mostly this category of habitual readers and addicted writers who find a newspaperless day most frustrating and who have a tough time keeping their itching fingers under check as there is nothing much to do but twiddle one’s thumbs and wait it out.
Meanwhile it would be good if we spared a thought for these unsung heroes who ‘sacrifice their todays’ for our tomorrows! We are indebted in more ways than one to all of them, not only for bringing the hottest and latest news into our homes but also for providing a venue to express our opinions in print. Come to think of it, we are indebted to so many people in our lives who provide the A to Z of our needs and I don’t mean just the newspaper. Let us use our time, at least on days without newspapers, to think of the scores of people who provide us with all the things that make our lives worth living.