My romance with The Sunday TOI. Review on The Times Of India

I've never been a voracious reader, always restricted to the odd NCERT school textbooks... Not much of Hindi sahitya... Nothing of English novels... atleast nothing significant till I was out of school... My interaction with newspapers, too, was minimal with a furtive glance at ''The Tribune'' on weekends, or the perfunctory browsing the headlines whenever I felt like - which was rarely...

News, the typical news, does not interest me... I am usually more concerned with things that affect me in some manner... I know I have no part to play in the degradation of Indian politics nor does my pragmatic mind believe that I could do much to clear the mess so integral of the circles of power... It doesn't make a difference in my life, who rules the country, because at the ground level things will just be the same... So, I play my part and well... I deviating from what I had planned to write...

Back on track, even my experience with TOI has not been the usual one which a newspaper is supposed to provide for... I usually stick to articles pertaining to lifestyles - general or glamorous... I am more into articles which tell a story or say something which is of direct consequence to me, though not being direct to extent of being direct in the sense of the word... And The Sunday Times gave me plenty of that stuff...

I wake up on Sundays and grab the TOI (or a few pages, if it is already being read) first thing in the morning... The Sunday TOI speaks an urban lingo, which is something I totally identify with... It is a lavish buffet of articles, views, reviews, thoughts, most of which I can easily connect to... Be it the movie reviews or Mind Over Matter posts or the MindSport puzzles... There's ample masala for thought, in their special reports which range from Exam Results and students, to Saas-Bahu soap operas, to Brain Drain and our jobs, to rising depression among the Indian middle class...

Then there's All that Matters - the page which has me hooked to Jug Suraiya, Shobha De and Gurcharan Das (sometimes)... Jugular Vein has remained my absolute fave for years now and I adore his wit and satirical style of writing... I'd give my proverbial eye/nose/ear to be able to write and elicit a laugh like Jug Suraiya does... Though, there are times when I have no clue of what he intends to say with his twisted words and made-up vocabulary, but I still am in awe of him all these years...

A couple of months, I read this lady Bachi Karkaria in TOI and must say she is competition to Jug, as regards me... because her Errartica is surely I could rave about as much... BTW could somebody throw some light on who Alec Smart is and what's the connection if you know what I mean?

The anecdotes in Mind Over Matter are poignant sometimes, inspiring at other times and worth reading most of the times... Ditto for some though-provoking ideas in the debate... The articles in Men and Women are also good though people-centric and I feel the good ol' Sunday Review/Lifestyle had more range when it came to columns...

I've had the kind of comfort level with other Sunday editions - be it HT, Hindu or DC... The Sunday Times Of India rules, when it comes to painting a panorama of myriad issues, mundane and the not-so topics... I'm gonna stay a reader for many years to come... This romance should continue!