The Hindu

The Hindu is associated with more knowledge and more prestige in my mind when I was a child. In our house we buy Dinamalar and in Selava annan's house they always by The Hindu. Laila atthai will borrow Dinamalar during the day. But in their house it is always The Hindu.

I never managed to read The Hindu, except glancing through the sports pages referred by Raju, those days. Then I came to college, Alagappa College - Chennai. During the first year I was at the hostel. A copy of The Hindu is provided at the Junior Hostel (JH) every morning. You do not get to read it comfortably. From second year onwards I moved in with my sister and stayed in Tambaram. Everyday there is a long commute from Tambaram to Guindy (Gandhi Mandapam) by bus (with route no now 21G, it used to be 21V, then B21 then 21J).

The distance should take about 20 minutes to cover. But the bus is overcrowded and will be stopped for the conductor to issue tickets and reach Gandhi Mandapam stop after 1 hour of starting from Tambaram. Somehow I hit upon the idea of reading newspaper during this time. I pick up a copy of The Hindu from the shop at bus stand and settle in a seat in the bus. Meticulously read all the news items on the front page, then the sports page, then the centre page. During the initial days, by this time I will reach the college. As days moved on I managed to read International Section, Business Section, Local News and even supplements when they are there.

When I read in stories that somebody reads The Hindu from beginning to end not even leaving the classfieds, I used to think that must be an exaggeration. I also came to that stage by the final year of my college.

Then I went to work in Dewas, staying in Indore. Indore has Free Press journal English news paper. Times of India will be delivered in the evenings (brought from Mumbai). In our GET hostel morning FP and evening ToI are subscribed. I had an awe for ToI to be the king of newspapers in India. With the contempt which came with familiarity I dismissed The Hindu's qualities from my mind and prepared to accept whatever ToI dishes out. In hindsight, ToI did not make much mark in my mind.

The equivalent of The Hindu reading happened with The Economic Times in Indore. I subscribed to ET and will board the morning company bus from Indore to Dewas with the copy of ET. I had decided to not to sleep during the bus journey and determinedly read ET during the whole journey every day. That opened up a whole new world of business, stock markets and economics to me. I continued the practice till I left India for Shanghai.

I became anti The Hindu when in Shanghai. The Hindu was deliberately anti LTTE and represents the Eelam news in a biased manner. The Eelam Tamils in tamil.net mailing list highlight this and wonder what can they do. I hit upon an idea and send a mail saying that I will not read The Hindu and will not buy it even when I get back to India till they mend their ways. This mail was sent to The Hindu with copy to tamil.net mailing list.

I more or less stuck to the resolution. Even today I have a mental barrier to buy The Hindu. For the past 6 months I am reading The Hindu every day bought in our office.

In China I used to buy China Daily, the state owned English newspaper. Some days I buy South China Morning Post, published in Hong Kong and airtransported to Shanghai everyday. One of my fascinations for Hong Kong is being able to buy SCMP without paying for the air fare cost.

During the time I spent in UK, I observed The Times, The Guardian and a host of smaller news papers. The Times stands out in my mind. I have picked up International Herald Tribune also a few times.

For the past 1 year reading Deccan Chronicle (The 1 rupee paper).

In my opinion, The Hindu is the best English daily in India and it will be among the top 10 in the world if not the best.