Stay away from each other!

For being India’s largest English daily, the Times of India doesn’t sell as much as it is bought. And in all probability, those inflated numbers could’ve provided the newspaper the motivation and confidence to take on one of India most reputed dailies: The Hindu. Being only a regular-sized newbie in Chennai, it awakened the city one fine morning to its first salvo, “Stuck with the news that puts you to sleep?” Mildly-amused media historians would later testify that the Times brought the ensuing advertisement pogrom upon itself.

[caption id="attachment_21598" align="aligncenter" width="365" caption="Image courtesy Sandheep Adhwaryu"][/caption]

At a time when finger-pointing was absolutely unnecessary, Times pointed an entire arm at a newspaper that catered to a significantly different audience. Perhaps someone should have told it right then that if one messes with bulls, one only gets horns. Because when The Hindu struck, it transgressed the borders of Chennai that the Times had limited itself to: the YouTube videos parading the former’s ‘Stay ahead of the times!’ line went viral, advertisement banners sprung up all around Tamil Nadu, and the Times ship was all but sunk.



Unfortunately for Chennai, this jejune tussle was news for a week. Retired station-masters used to waking up every morning to a tumbler of filter coffee and The Hindu were now being alerted to the existence of Page 3 parties and wardrobe malfunctions. Large sections of important pages were given up to poking fun at the Times with thinly veiled smugness while readers tried to understand where the logic was in advertising about The Hindu in The Hindu to people who were already buying The Hindu. Masquerading media muscle under the pretext of snubbing the Times? Maybe.



Thinking it had thrown the kitchen sink into it its attack against The Hindu, the Times blanched when it got the bathtub back. Its first response was to acknowledge the “waking” of The Hindu to its competition. This led many to believe that the competition concerned the invention of catchphrases, prompting Dhanush to go back in time and record Kolaveri.

[caption id="attachment_21602" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Meteoric comeback!"][/caption]

To the Times, it is plausible that any publicity is good publicity, but The Hindu, in the opinion of many of its readers, overstated its strengths and wasted important space and time retaliating to a competitor’s notably specious claims. As the dust begins to settle now, residents of Chennai are finally waking up to a world where nothing has changed… except for a grim parting shot from the Times that makes too much sense.

[caption id="attachment_21603" align="alignleft" width="640" caption="The Hindu could take a leaf out of Einstein's book and (apart from running a daily science page) hold back from becoming a condescending news-giver."][/caption]

One solipsistic half

I wish I had something unwritten lying around somewhere: that way, I would only have to find it to know that I will have written something soon. Embossed with the faint shapes of letters strung together as unborn words, I ought to still have the freedom to decide what I want to write about; the moment I have, however, I will only be informed of how it is to be put down. Like a dog on a leash—neither loose nor tight—that accompanies its walker around the neighbourhood, through alleys and lanes, avenues and boulevards, all the while neither being lead nor being goaded, I must be turned to fill up the pages one after another knowing neither the futility of my will nor the successes of my endeavour. Does there exist such a magical manuscript that I may only discover it? Perhaps there does, from the moment I finish a sentence and sit back, pondering upon the text to follow—continuity of essence, enrichment of character, the like—the finished work flashes before my eyes, sculpted to perfection by a visceral sense that pierces together experience and desire, and I reach forward to touch the phantasm, aware full well of the disappointment that awaits as is due its illusory existence, and so pick the pen up once more, knowing what must definitely follow. Ha! Would that my mind was so pleasurably dual—nay!—and I suffer already the pains of Peter's theft, the vulgarity of Paul's profits...

The privilege of good design

Why I Could Walk, And Why I Might Not

I don’t like walking. It’s a witless excursion.

I’d much rather look outside from my steel window; after all, it has become easy to reassure myself that there is no such thing as fresh air. When I set forth, the texture of the road feeling uncharacteristically affable, the occasional patch of gravel picks at my skin, and I feel like a condemned showpiece, a necessary fixture of society chained firmly to showmanship and the like–I can feel the stares, an invisible sneer, a finger pointed anywhere but, somehow, also at me. I feel open, like a lone journeyman on a long journey with the yawning distance nagging at me to cover it.

If I must walk–which fate I hope doesn’t befall me soon–I will because I have to. It won’t be an ailment of the legs but, strictly speaking, a yearning of the heart that’s going to get me off my arse. Yet again, there’s a sizable dose of toil left to be dedicated, to oil the joints and other rusting levers and so forth, and set forth like a Wodehousian “bird in the sky”.

When I walk, I only want to walk. I don’t want to pause and wonder which way to turn when faced with a fork, I don’t want to negotiate puddles and jaywalking urchins determined to run into my legs. A walk must preferably be in the shadows of a cherry blossom, an offering of apples, or a silent and waiting pine, with no faculty dedicated to any trivialities–I’m neither a lion nor a warrior. I only want to walk with all the purpose of walking left in me.

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="Walk of Fame Europe"][/caption]

It only seems stupid to romanticize such matters, even though it’s so easy to draw parallels to the image of a man walking with his chin thrust into the heavens, a picture “which draws forth reserves from the soul to be what it is–an image of oneself that the world sees”. Unfortunately, the same convention is extended to many matters that I’d rather be left alone.

For example, I know how it can be hard on someone when he’s judged by the shoes he wears, the wine he relishes or his standing in society, but it’s a tough world out there and someone or the other is going to the bottom. Otherwise, you see, being at the top makes no sense.

There’s no time or obligation for anyone to wait to read and judge the preferences of others. A civilization’s as smart as its stupidest businessman. We just have no way of knowing who that is, and as it turns out, it makes all the difference. This obsession with romanticism is deleteriously postmodern on the face of it.

However, just as this practice works detrimentally in the one direction, it could be put to good use in the other, something like subjecting it to a taste of its own medicine. If something about being human is romanticized, then it does make good sense to be romantic. Speak swiftly, be just, and ensure that your actions are impregnated with purpose, walk with a gait not noticeable awkwardly in a crowd yet one of a kind in its demeanour.

Do everything without regret or hesitation, as if the place of your actions in society is just as important as inalienable as place of the stars in the night sky, and backed by impeccable reason and judgment. Allow no room for doubt; keep the road straight and the end in sight. The voice of reason is nothing but the truth of words, its timbre but the quality of the language, its universality but the statement itself!

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