LT COL NOEL ELLIS
03/V/2025
In the morning it is my duty to
get the newspaper, which our very sincere newspaper wala drops at our doorstep quite
early. Much before the public opens their mobile phones & get busy watching
reels which are an addiction.
Have you guys noticed how this
piece of ‘Raddi’ is delivered? I am not going into the story of making of a
newspaper. Pages have more advertisements than news but then lands with you.
Having followed newspaper vendor
closely and observed his modus operandi, it is a herculean task. Today, people
have shifted to e-newspapers and started consuming other form of news. Poor
guys are having a tough time selling one and making a living from the
commission.
Sorting the news papers is done as
per clients before he starts from his home. With vast areas to cover, this man categorises
the papers as per his route chart. He knows which house consumes which brand of
the news paper. Some people take two or more also.
In our row, there are twenty
houses, out of which seven are vacant. The first one is a politician’s house.
Naturally, the thud of the newspaper bundle when it falls says it all. Ours is
the fifth house. Then Paper R, D, B, T, TB, BD are thrown. R for Rajasthan
Patrika, B for Bhaskar, D for Dainik Jagran, T for TOI and so on.
All these combinations are sorted
out and kept in separate bags. Some homes subscribe but leave the papers to
rot. Some people don’t inform the vendor and leave. Their cars where this
newspaper lands read it instead.
Last year, one paper had gone
missing. It was after almost a month we discovered it lying on our garage roof.
This year too, another newspaper in April went untraceable. I searched at every
unusual place but alas could not locate it. We kept thinking that our man
forgot to deliver it.
What has happened is that we have
very dainty plants kept at the mouth of our garage. The style of the newspaper
boy’s ‘chuck’ has damaged quite a few of them. Sometimes, he rolls it up in a ‘cylindrical
form’, that is the most dangerous type of delivery which has taken the maximum
toll of plants. If he folds it in just two, the newspaper glides and lands
smoothly.
One has to notice the manner, style,
gait, and force used for the flick of his wrist, which is different for every
home for throwing the newspaper. Boy, it is an art.
We have added an obstacle for
him. Our car is placed across the garage for two reasons. One, is that the
junior world cup football team practices in the lawn across. These kids have
sent their ball flying and have destroyed so many pots. Second, it provides a
little shade to the pots.
However, for the newspaper man it
is a major hurdle. He has to ‘time his throw’, a little before the car, over
the car or after the car. He finishes his job in the first two as the next
house has a different kind of paper to be delivered. If he stops, it wastes his
precious time. He keeps going in the same momentum non-stop, till he gets out
of the colony collecting one newspaper which he left with a guard to read,
while he went around doing his job.
With swimming season on, the kids
have plunged into the pool. However, our plants were giving us hints of being
unhappy. Initially, I thought it was over watering, then it turned out to be
underwatering. Still, our coleus collection started losing lustre and colour. This
was a cause of concern. The reason I found out today.
One missing newspaper hid itself
and got tucked in under the foliage of the plants. Poor plants had been just
reading the headlines earlier, before I picked the newspaper up. Now, they were
reading the same newspaper over and over again and were bored to death.
I understood their condition. TV
news channels are the same. They induce such venom in you day in and day out by
repeating things. People get brainwashed or sick watching news.
Watching the Indo-Pak war hysteria
on the TV even before it started suddenly finished when they found some other
news to waste time on. I, being a military man, had got sucked in to see what
would happen after Pahalgam, but got fed up listening to the diatribe of the
news anchors and their panellists. TV news is out of the window again. Let
peace prevail.
Imagine how plants reacted to the
‘rubbish in print’. The right place for that newspaper is the compost bin.
Don’t leave the newspaper outside
please. Have you guessed the reason? I wonder!!!!!!
JAI HIND
©® NOEL ELLIS
Beautifully penned as always. 8 agree with part about right place for Newspaper. In my casrle, it is used for disposing of all waste related to my per. 😃
ReplyDeleteBeautifully penned as always. 8 agree with part about right place for Newspaper. In my casrle, it is used for disposing of all waste related to my per. 😃
ReplyDeleteThank you
ReplyDelete