Slimes of India

This country was fortunate enough to have such newspapers as The Hindu, The Indian Express (the old one, not the new one), Deccan Herald, to name a few. This country is also unfortunate to have such newspapers as Times of India and Mid-day.

Suman Kumar has blogged about TOI, so has Jivha. My friends who shifted to Bombay are happy though, they do not have to buy glossy magazines to get pictures of semi-naked women and read about their escapades. They just buy ToI, and log on to its website/blog where some 'articles' look like they were lifted straight out of The Penthouse Diaries. India doesn't have a tablod like The Sun? No man, we have ToI. It has shown more areola than an adoloscent's wet-dream.

There used to be a time when Americans said 'I buy Playboy for the articles'. Now many Indians are saying the same: 'I buy ToI for the articles'. Read what Pradyuman Maheshwari has to say about it.

Trying to break into Chennai with such a newspaper woule be like selling George W Bush to the Arabs or John Kerry to the Republicans, or Mu. Karunanidhi to Jayalalithaa. Not so long ago, ToI caught Jaya Madam, the CM of TN, to publish a book from ToI stables to gain a foothold in the Hindu (the newspaper) dominated Chennai. Jaya Madam wanted ToI to act as a counter-balance to what she says a 'Hostile Media loaded with personal vendetta against a self-made woman' that is The Hindu and The New Indian Express. Maybe more on this in a later post. Nothing has transpired still and The Hindu still rules supreme. The day ToI becomes the leading publisher in Chennai like it says, 'in Mumbai Pune Delhi Calcutta...', Hell would have frozen over. Moreover the pretty lineup sounds like a copy of 'Singapore, Malaysia, Ceylon, Thailand aagiya naadugalil prasithi pettra Gopal Palpodi'. It means, 'Gopal Toothpowder, Famous in [the country list].'