During my growing up days back in Bhubaneswar, The Times of India was the only quality English Newspaper available. It's alternatives, the Calcutta based "The Statesman" and "The Telegraph" were no where close. There was no local edition of it available in my city. It's Delhi edition was fetched by the Indian Airlines flight which was as notoriously irregular as monsoon these days.
The Newspaper would be home delivered in the evening, often as late as 9 PM. Due to its vagaries, very often we would receive 2-3 issues bundled together, with the bunch weighing more than a kilogram (2 lbs) at times. Once the tired hawker late in the evening throws upstairs in the flat we lived. Once hit the bald head of our neighbor MAUSA (Uncle) resulting in a bump, and goose bumps to those who heard him showering choicest of expletives to the hapless hawker.
I was hooked to it, religiously reading it everyday, often more diligently than my text books. After moving out of India, as I had to depend on the websites for news, Times Of India was the first which came to my mind. It's website now resembles more like a tabloid. The web page takes eons to load, full of junk commercials and the latest seductive pose of some model "Poonam Pandey" prominently adoring its website. I find hardly any newsworthy item, all you see kinky stuff like "10 ways to satisfy your partner" and sundry crap. An eye catching front page news "Teacher arrested for raping a 16 year old girl" with a blurry picture, stayed for several months (gladly I don't see it anymore). It's time Times Of India declare its web edition as a tabloid. Not sure how its print version is doing these days.
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