There was a time (when I was in my school) when I used to do anything for the supplement that comes along with newspapers. Then I was living in Neyveli and there used to be a single shop near our home that sells newspapers. My father though an avid reader, surprisingly is not a newspaper reader. I have rarely seen him with a newspaper and as such we did not have the habit of getting the newspapers daily. But our neighbour (for 16 years) is a newspaper freak. I largely owe my knowledge of English and worldwide to him& The Hindu. He reads English newspaper (read The Hindu) and there was virtually no other English newspaper at that time….. (ofcourse Indian Express was there….but you know….Hindu is always considered THE newspaper) But then I cannot read the entire Hindu, so he recommended Tamil Newspaper. Then DinaMalar was the most famous Tamil Newspaper (DinaThanthi was also there….but did I tell Newspaper) and was known for giving supplements every week on specific days (it continues till now). As far as my knowledge goes, they are the ones who pioneered this concept in Tamilnadu. They used to give “Siruvarmalar” on Fridays and “Vaaramalar” on Sundays. “Vaaramalar” didn’t enthuse me but Siruvarmalar did enthuse me as a child. However my father reasoned it made sense to buy it for a single day- Friday instead of buying it everyday as only I read the book and there was none to read the newspaper. It was agreed that Dinamalar would be bought every Friday. But then the problem is that the daily newspaper vendor would not agree to have a Single day customer and hence he refused to put paper on the single day. Now it fell on me that if I need the paper then I should go and buy it. I agreed.
Now my school starts at 8.30 in the morning and the newspaper comes to the stand at 5.00 in the morning. In Neyveli as in every other major industrial town, the first shift at Neyveli Lignite Corporation starts and the previous night shift ends at 6.00. So, usually there will be heavy rush in the morning hours and the first thing to get sold in the shop would be newspapers. To get the paper I had to get up atleast at 5.45 , brush up (we are not supposed to even touch Saraswathi without brushing- that was then) and virtually run to the stall to get the issue. This would not be a daily routine but would be a one day story- just on Fridays. My mother would normally wake me up and rushes me to get the paper (I will be upset if I didn’t get the paper).
The worst part is that my neighbour would be waiting at his gate (I need to cross his house to get to my house) for the paper. I have this habit of using new things myself first. I wouldn’t mind others using but only after I have used it atleast once. I want newspaper in particular fresh and neat. Even now if I had read the newspaper, none would recognize it by looking at the newspaper. There wouldn’t be any sign that I have read it. I cannot give the fresh paper to my neighbour- so I devised an alternative….how about reading the newspaper in the stall itself and come after finishing it?...got to implement that too. This continued for sometime. By this time, the stall guy and I got close and he would have a paper reserved for me on Fridays alone. Now I can go at 6.00 and still get the paper, But the problem now is that because I got up at 6.00 and read Siruvarmalar for another 1 hour, I got late to the school.
The school starts at 8.30 and got to read the lessons daily. Had on many occasions read Siruvarmalar inside the school book. One particular instance even coiled the bed around me and read the magazine. The beds used to be rolled and put in another room – you go to that room, coil yourself into the bed and viola- no one can find you. That day there was a real halla-bolla in the house over missing son. Had only they known I was inside the bed!!!!!. After that I never got a chance to really try that again.