Times of a Tabloid

Ad-verse Condition
"Al-Qaida in Kanpur, selling Insurance !" screamed the thursday's Times of India edition like it had ants in its pants, a few months ago. Turns out to be just an advertizing gimmick by an insurance company in UP, which the Times reporter covered.
I can't believe the extent of stupidity this paper has managed to amass in recent years. From a once respected daily, it has now turned into a novice tabloid. Who else in their right mind can take this crap as "News" ! ... The paper obviously is trying very hard to please its readers, by talking their talk, but unfortunately for it, this simply isn't the right direction.

Megalomaniac
The paper tries so hard to please its readers that it's simply amazing the extent to which it goes to lick each one of it's readers boots. All the more evident in the way it gives cricket a prized place in its sports section. Agreed it has a popular following here, but who the hell wants to know which cricketer had what food for the day, when in wimbledon all hell was breaking loose. Just going through a few editions when chapell was named coach will give one a very good idea of what TOI is up to. "chapell did this", "chapell ate that", "chapell swam here" "chapell kicked there".... man !! who in their right mind would be interested in an old man's daily routine !

Critical Nonsense
The only thing TOI is good at is to sensationalize crappy news, make people believe that the news they get from TOI is indeed of critical importance to them, with most of the news sounding more like as though a convicted lunatic is walking around in the neighbourhood with missiles tied to his shorts ! Only after we have read the full dumb story that it becomes clear that it's actually a kid's who's been running around with two unusually long pencils in his pocket, and then followed by a long boring story about bringing up kids without the aid of pencils ! That's news !, courtesy: TOI.

Many a times , i feel, TOI is majorly responsible for all that euphoria it creates about players, movies, cricket or all those stuff which turn out to be a damp squib.

Whacky Whacks
The dumbness of the paper is only equalled by an even more pathetic way in which it tries to lure people by their so called 'whacky' one liners. For instance, their world news section is now named "The World at your Feet"....tell me, does this even remotely make sense ? Even a drunk hyena would agree that this is the act of a bafoon. Or the first page one liner printed above the name of the paper, which says "Zero Worries. Zero Duties. Celebrations Unlimited"....duh !. Even a baby that can't sit on its potty properly has a million worries, and these guys talk like they are publishing for readers on MARS to read it.

Poll position
Anyone familiar with the so called Poll section of the TOI will agree with me on the kind of questions that are put up for poll. I usually read that section of the paper when i feel this intense urge to barf; works for me. Many a times it makes me wonder if TOI employs people in its ruddy office to actually participate in those polls. Insane questions more like "Do you think Aishwarya should have slapped salman ?" or even worse "Is Bill Gates ready for Pearly Gates ?" keep readers guessing...astoundingly, many a times there is only a "Yes" and a "No" for the reader to choose from, when most of the time its "can't say" which is the answer ! how can a midget sitting in Domlur know why Aishwarya chose to do what she did !
Well any roadside hawker will tell you that this is a cheap gimmick to find out how many people read their paper along with increasing the sms traffic, and then finally publish one fine day that it's nearest rival "The Deccan Herald" had to eat it's shoes for trying to compete with it. Anyway, both these newspapers bring out ads against each other, which more or less looks like two hungry mongrels trying to bite into each other's tail.

Unnerving Dubya
Of Course the most celebrated crap about TOI are its reporters and it columnists. It's long time loyalist The-Pin-head-Poop-Brain Jug Suraiya should have actually starved of hunger like one of those somalia UNICEF baby ads, but for TOI. Who in the right mind would give him a job otherwise. His infamous Dubyaman cartoon strip was such a pain to read, it used to bring me back those childhood nightmares of "goggayya"(Devil with a banjo), which that long lost aunty used to tell me to put me to sleep. I still remember the curses readers used to send(which the TOI had the nerve to publish right below the cartoon) every damn day, and almost plead it to remove that cartoon strip. Half of pin-head's hairs must have fallen off because of those curses. One reader had almost threatened to create a rival comic strip in Deccan Herald, while another wrote "I like to read the curses people send, more than the cartoon itself, so please keep up the work" :D....As for me, i used to read that strip whenever i felt threatened that i was the last fool left on the face of the earth, and console myself that i was wrong.

Caste-ing a bait
A few months ago, an ad for their matrimonial edition, on the front page of the paper shouted "We openly discriminate among people. We support people who advertize in our matrimonial service with the words caste no bar in their ad, by providing a 10% discount"... i mean this is sordid stuff....Does the Times of India think it is some neo-secularist, out to rid the society of caste and prejudice ? i would laugh my head out if someone told me "yes"...It is just a pathetic way, chosen by the paper, to get popular following with it's pseudo-secular views. Agreed there are problems with systems in a society, but everything has a way to be dealt with. Times of India is no full of saints who have given up their happiness for the cause of people. It has always been a sack full of dirty vagabonds who eat into the society by exploiting its weakness.

Ad-vantage
Added to this, the paper is filled with ads, so much so that we have to virtually search for news. Look at the creativity of the advertizers, they publish their ads that look like news columns; only after we have read it completely we come to know that it is a solicitation by a plumbing company asking us to buy "Ashok pipes" !...Darn this paper ! one day they'll publish a small sheet of paper which will tell the pages and columns in which news can be found in their newspaper for that day !.

Sleezy Solace
What was once a Information supplement, the Bangalore Times has now turned into one that is a sleezy compliment. Well another paper "Asian Age" was born that way, but TOI didn't think twice before turning into one either. Starting from those putrid "15 questions to keep your wife happy", to "5 easy ways to separate from each other", TOI has printed a whole load of elephant dung in the past years. None make sense, especially those silly quizzes which evaluates nothing more than the amount of mental crap that readers have acquired over the years reading this damned news paper.

In its attempt to appeal to the younger generation, TOI goes one step ahead by buying itself a medallion of foolishness, apart from being an accomplished street fool. Many a times, the paper itself has no idea what its printing, and keeps publishing the same rabid stuff again and again in different pages, hoping people will not find out.

Of course the limited creativity that its crew possesses is hardly usable, so they print stuff that hardly leaves anything to the reader's creativity or imagination.

The Times did shine
Once a Bhel-puri guy was particularly happy about TOI, my rants notwithstanding, "Saar ee times auf india nouru super . ond rupai kotre, 1 kg paper kodthaare, ond dinakke asht saaku" (The Times of India guys are too good, for 1 rupee they give a kg of paper, enough for me to sell bhel-puri to customers for 1 full day)

Needless to say, i stopped respecting TOI a long time ago, but i do read it once in awhile to see if it has broken records in steeping even lower. Until now the TOI has not failed me in accomplishing that. Atleast they are good at that !