Do you still read the newspaper?

During my 45-minute one-way train journey to work, I still see a few commuters reading newspapers or solving Sudoku (crosswords are out). It is a reassuring sight for until a little over a decade ago, it was the only thing we did. Most others are either dozing off or thumbing away on their smartphones or listening to music on their iPods. I seldom find anyone reading books these days. This morning, as the mastheads of familiar newspapers caught my eye and touched a sentimental chord, I recalled my own association with the once ubiquitous newspaper long before I entered journalism and ruined my career. 

Gripping

I grew up with newspapers, thanks to my father and his elder brother who were seasoned journalists in their time. We used to get four papers delivered at home on weekdays and a few more on Sundays, not counting tabloid-size eveningers. I was keen on current affairs, particularly the Cold War standoffs, and there was a time when I knew the names of heads of countries and their foreign ministers by heart. I was also familiar with intelligence agencies and took pride in memorising, and occasionally showing off, the full form of KGB—Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti—or State Security for the Supreme Soviet Society. I can rattle it off even now in the dead of night. Clearly, back then I was idling.

It is possible that reading about KGB and CIA and Mossad and Stasi in the newspapers triggered my interest in spy fiction and one of the first espionage novels I read was The Red Gods (1981) by Donald Lindquist. It was about a Soviet conspiracy to nuke America. I remember the novel as being gripping and well-written. I think I have recommended it to my (blog) friends.

Fascinating

In 1986, I got my first newspaper job and there was no turning back, though how I wish I’d right away. In those days I read an awful lot of newspapers and magazines including foreign periodicals. The Economist, The Times, London, and its literary supplement, The Guardian, Time and Newsweek, and International Herald Tribune were a favourite. I’d enthusiastically stack a variety of Sunday newspapers at home, date wise, so I could read them during the week. That never happened. The newspapers gathered dust. After a while I outgrew the habit and made better use of the trunk space. I got rid of the trunk.

At the time I read all kinds of novels, as I do now. I was particularly fond of Tom Shapre (whose books I’m collecting again), Frank G. Slaughter, Nevil Shute, A.J. Cronin, Lloyd C. Douglas, Charles Dickens, and Malcolm Bradbury. I also read a lot of popular bestselling authors from Harold Robbins to Alistair MacLean and Robert Ludlum to Frederick Forsyth. Cult writers like Kurt Vonnegut, Joseph Heller, and Ray Bradbury came later. And then I took to blogging which changed my reading completely, and for the better. For this I have all of you to thank.

Favourite Cronin

Today, I glance at the headlines on the only morning newspaper I get at home, The Times of India, and barely go through the dozen papers I get in office. Instead, I follow news online a couple of times a day and read analysis and essays on credible political and history websites. I stopped watching television news, because it's all about anchoring and loudmouths and ratings and little else. While I regret getting into journalism at nineteen, as I did, I admit it had a formative influence on my reading, whether it was newspapers and magazines or books and comic books.