Toilet paper

When I started this blog I decided to be very strict on one particular aspect- that I will blog only about things that have either happened in my life or about those that I ve experienced during my brief stay in this planet, neither of which would be of any use to others. So here goes another one of my good for nothing posts.

• The largest circulated daily: Hindustan Times

• The second largest circulated daily: The Hindu

• The total number of registered newspapers, as on 31 December 2000: 49,145

• The second largest number of newspapers and periodicals in any language: English (7,175).

Well by now you must ve come to one of the following two conclusions:

This fellow has run out of steam; he hasn’t got anything to write about and so he is giving us stupid statistics

Or you might ve decided that this fellow is gonna go blah blah about how the pen is mightier than the sword….

But wait! That’s not what I'm gonna talk about now… It is this thing about…ahem….hmmm…err… how do I start… We must ve all experienced this at some point of time in our life so assuming that I won’t be ridiculed about this blog I continue….

How many of you read newspapers…ah! I see lotsa hands…. That is a good habit, good for you all!

Now how many of you read them in the toilet? I see not many of you put your hands up.

For many of you, the only paper that is found in your toilet is definitely not something that you would wanna read. But for the rest of us, who constitute the minority, reading newspapers in the toilet is a habit that we simply cannot kick and we have no intention to do so!

You‘ll certainly laugh if I say that the toilet is one of the best places to read. If you are able to ignore your mom occasionally shouting for you to come out so that you can get the bus in time, it’s a place where there is no irritating blaring of the FM or television, no Honk! Honk! of the vehicles, no dogs barking, no early morning stupid visitors to disturb you, no Gurkha waiting for you to pay him off…. I can go on and on and on, but it is up to you if you want to try it. The best thing that could come out of this reading in toilet is that you’ll stop using the internet to get to know the news; it will actually increase the number of people who prefer newspapers to e-print (unless you are that kind of daredevil who wouldn’t mind taking your laptop along with you inside the toilet). The only drawback is that you‘ll have to put up with your mom’s berating!

I distinctly remember myself starting to develop this keenness towards reading papers even as I was a kid. What started as reading comic strips slowly evolved to magazines and weekly and then to the newspapers. The young world and the last page of Hindu was enough to sustain my reading habits at that time. By the time I was in high school I had become addicted to newspapers. I started hating public holidays coz there was no news paper the next day! If u had been my neighbor at some point of time in your life you would ve definitely seen me at least once, standing at my gate cursing the paper boy for being late. I used to get pretty irritable and quite volatile on those days.

What I don’t remember is how I picked up this habit of reading in the toilet! It must ve been during those horrendous days when I was in my tenth std. I'm not the kinda guy you would find to be exactly brilliant. I used to slug it out each time they announced those damned exams. And being a strong believer in “don’t do today, what you can put off for tomorrow”, I always had a significant part of my lessons to be done on the morning of the exams. I'm not an early bird you see, so I had to somehow squeeze in those lessons in the morning; I cannot read while I’m brushing my teeth or while taking a bath…. So I took them to the toilet seat!

And from that day on, I ve learnt more sitting in the toilet seat than I ve ever learnt in any of my classrooms. I got to know Newton and Einstein better in there than I ve managed in a laboratory. I ve understood the political scenario during the World wars, learnt the difference between a PNP and a NPN transistor, mastered the C programming, introduced myself to web development etc….. everything in the quiet of the toilet.

It wouldn't be an exaggeration if i said that the toilet seat has been to me what the Asvattha tree was to Lord Buddha!

By the time the exams got over, I had got so used to reading in the toilet that I found it quite weird not to take a book inside; so I decided to switch to newspapers instead. And thus began my association with toilet and the newspapers. I got to understand Bush, Osama, Putin, Jacqeus Chirac, Sensex, Medha Patkar, Le Clemenceau, Ganguly and what not inside that silent room.

It has now got to a point where, anytime you go inside the toilet there is a big bundle of old newspapers piled on top of the flush! In fact anyone who needed some old newspaper came straight to me coz they knew where it would be!

I know most of you are screwing up your face in disgust after reading this blog, but I'm jus part of a small cult who is desperately trying to keep alive a dying custom!

.-Karthikeyan