2 reasons...

2 Reasons - (Written in June 2000)

"Ae((&#**@))*fghfgh%^&%^jsfhh43^%$%$#JK..h&&^%^$...." 6:30 AM when my friend was still in his bed, heard his wife conversing with an unfamiliar voice outside. Disturbed by that conversation, he had no choice but to get up and joined the early morning mob cursing his wife for her encounter with a stranger. Only when he reached the door, realised that he had
made quite sensible decision in interfering, for the person his wife arguing was an astonishingly beautiful young lady, may be in her early twenties speaking beautiful Hinglish. With an immediate affect he rubbed the corners of his eyes, to find the lady with a brown valet made of crocodile's rough skin, holding a sheet of paper and a pen accompanied by an equal aged
unattractive male holding few newspapers. She had wore an attractive T-shirt with Bon Jovi with a guitar embossed on it, matching to her blue jeans deeply hugged to her legs. Couple of seconds were spent to understand that she was a sales representative and her intention was to promote the sales of the rapidly growing newspaper in Bangalore. He soon joined when
his wife was literally grumbling with that fair lady to convince her decision of not subscribing that newspaper. With no thoughts, he sincerely added, " I have 2 reasons for opting the other newspaper than yours..." She was hell bent upon him to give the justification for preferring some other newspaper over hers.

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Probably I was in late high school when I had madly fallen in love with Journalism, Times of India being my favorite newspaper. My parents all the time feared that I might land in Journalism till I took Science in my 11th standard. As my place, Bellary had very few circulation of TOI, I had to visit the newspaper vendor near bus-stand almost every day on my way
to my school/college on my SLR cycle. Couldn't resist recollecting the days of early 90's.. Dilip Padgaonkar, the then Editor of Times, Shourie of Indian Express, Siddharth Basu and many others were undisputedly my heroes. But the only reason of my Times subscription amidst the poor circulation has to be affiliated to the Ramon Magsassay Award winner, R.K.Laxman. I still
refer his "YOU SAID IT" series, SCIENCE SMILES, IDLE HOURS, The Management of Management..., that I had specially bought when my father had been to Bangalore. Those were the days when I used to shamelessly imitate his cartooning lines, his common man, his ways of expression till I finally got moulded to use my own ideas and come out of his shadow.
Ramakrishna Hegde's and Telugu Desam's (NTR) defeat in the South, Rajiv gandhi's face hiding situation in the North along with the then I & B Minister H.K.L Bhagath and Jagdeesh Titler, leaving V.P.Singh to victory, Bofors, Mandal commission, Ram Janbhoomi, Gulf war etc..were no doubt the favorite topics of those times. For a cartoonist, good thing about politics is,
there is no dearth of ideas.. V.P Singh's fur cap, Rajiv Gandhi's nose, Devilal's turban, Chandrashekar's beard, P.V.N's lousy face, Saddam's big moustache..were any cartoonist's feast. That was the Times of India when I used to observe these features in Laxman's cartoons..Those were also the days when news readers of DD Ramu Damodaran, Minu, Salma sultan, Shammi
Narang, Rini Simon(khanna), serials like Kavitha chaudhari's Udaan, Fauji (SRK's :), Nukkad, Shyam Benegal's Intezar, Pankaj Kapur's Karam Chand appeared on whole and sole of small screens, DD. Those days R.K.Narayan's novels and Anton Chekov's stories also tempted me write innumerable short stories; ohhh...those days... it also reminds me getting fainted during the frog dissection by the smell of those frogs, imported from a local 'Avambhavi' water tank filled with dirty green water, mixed with chloroform to bring sedation to those innocent amphibians..Oh....those days!!! Ponnappa already had his column "OFFSIDE" in the third page of Bangalore edition of Times. The newspaper Hindu's cartoonist Keshav, also was no less favourite to me. India Today's Ajith Ninan, Week's Yesudasan and Prakash shetty, funny lines of our
local lad Panju Ganguli belonging to Business India, E-naadu's Sridhar, Kannada Prabha's Narendra, Udayavani's Nadig regularly used to feed me ideas. I continued the subscription of Times though not regularly, till I got myself into the Karnataka's traditional English daily Deccan Herald few years back.

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Now his justification of 2 reasons started, "..this might give better coverage than any other, might also provide better news and analysis, more pages, more colorful, but my first reason for not choosing this is the subject of those articles covered which may not be appreciated by people of all age groups." The gorgeously looking lady looked furios..interrupted him to explain the difficulty in the subject he faced. He continued, "well.....for a few successive Saturdays the subjects chosen were either on extra marital life or Homo sexuality, why women...etc etc etc..one fine day, appeared an article, 'Do u wish your daughter to be a virgin?'.. My 5 year old daughter reading that asked me, 'papa, what is meant by virgin?'.. Well,, Then I decided to stop! There was a minute of silence..soon she recovered, raising her shoulders "I don't mind the subject...". He was firm in his reply, "..but I mind! ". His offensive mood absolutely made her go dumb,
decided to leave. He stopped her again..."you didn't ask me the second reason....", she was not sure she was in need of that, though slowly turned back restlessly when he concluded, "..the second reason is that, my colleague and a good friend of mine is a Cartoonist for the newspaper I subscribe..."... By the time he could complete, she had already reached the next door, when the other guy simply followed her. My friend went back to the bed telling his wife to wake him up after a few minutes..