MORNING DELIGHT

Subhashis Das

Mornings bring with itself smaller joys; a steaming cup of hot tea, the bhajaans that dish out from my wife's FM radio set, the call of a dove who has nested with its partner in the Asok tree of our neighbour. And ofcourse the sound of the plop of the newspaper thrown on the verendah by the paper vendor.

Newspapers in the morning particularly on Sundays are such a delight despite knowing that the contents aren't much new as most of them are more or less similar to yesterday's news. Still you long to listen to the sound of the the newspaper hurled onto the floor of the verendah.
News aside the colourful layout of Sunday Supplements are indeed such a joy to glance at but on several occasions the substance are such anticlimax.

Film and cricket stars are such a bore, in other words to me the glamour and shine of these supplements are monotonous that I toss them away at a faster pace than I am drawn towards them.

The insides of these Sunday papers could contain good reading materials but many a times these are great disappointments.
Lives of film and cricket stars do not interest me; I would prefer reading the life of the commuter in a local train of Kolkata or Mumbai or that in a small town or that of a highly erudite person settled in the woods of Jharkhand or Western Ghats post to resigning from a white collared occupation. Interviews allure me a lot but would love to read about a flutist, a tabalchi, a pianist, a jazz or a thumri exponent, a river or an elephant activist, a child coal labourer in Jharia, a photographer, a spot boy in a film studio, an unknown poet, painter or an author and Ruskin Bond.

The icon of Singh's "With malice towards one and all".

"With malice towards one and all". When alive, he would write a column in Hindustan Times under this heading and I would eagerly wait all the week through to read it; yes that was Khushwant Singh, the grand Sardar of the Indian literary world. His wit and humour and his sardar gaalis and jokes had me glued to his articles.
And when the column ended I opined that perhaps Singh had quit HT. But occasionally hither and tither I would spot his write ups (couldn't say whether they were the reprints of the older ones) and I would lap it up in one go with much glee.
And one day his articles stopped being published; he wasn't writing as he had become old and then he died, suddenly.
I lost all interest in newspapers.

Gopalkrishna Gandhi

After some hectic years that slipped past by, Gopal Krishna Gandhi, the grandson of Bapu after his stint as the Governor of Bengal emerged as an impressive columnist. His articles were tender, humane and heartwarming; written in an equally placid and affectionate language although it lacked the satire and the rustic humour which Singh was renowned for. However Gandhi's keen observation and understanding of life and his portrayal of his approach towards it in paper certainly elevated him to that envious pedestal which very less writers in the English language in India has been able to set foot upon.
I fell in love with his column in Hindustan Times. Newspapers began to have meaning for me once again.0

I particularly remember Gandhi's Perfect Reverberations in HT, one of his passionate write-ups in which he questions; perhaps more to himself than to his obtuse or smart readers whether there was anything flawless in creation, in history or in human society? He however furnishes the answer himself; the Kanchenjunga in twilight, the flowering Jacaranda tree that cannot be improved upon even by the Gods and the face of Ramana Maharishi whose face he considers to be the most beautiful in the world.

Gandhi also cites the episode of Apu-Durga's stealing and throwing away of the stringed bead in Ray's iconic Pather Panchali in which Durga in one scene flings the stringed bead into the water and the water covers up for Apu who had earlier pinched it. Later Durga dies carrying the secret with her. Gandhi is impressed in the manner Ray depicts the entire episode. This he regards as one of his favourite scenes in the film and further goes on to state that if this is not perfection then what is.
I admire his eyes that spot goodness in humans. If you see goodness in small things of life then you yourself must be good.
I however do not see Gandhi much in papers these days.
Sad.