New( )papers

It was some unrecollectable time in the month of February when I was spotted cruising along one of the various bottle-necky, meandering roads in this megalopolis of Bombay, alias, Mumbai. Huge hoardings putting up swank neon advertisements of a certain three lettered newspaper that would be launched in an undecided date soon. The name had something to do with building blocks of protein molecules paired together and left stranded in sumthin called a double helical membranous surrounding found scattered voluminously all across our own and others’ bodies; that decide whether we are snake in beet-roots or pudding in honey.(For all purposes , I endorse all references to biology as one from a distressed biology student who , in no manner can take the onslaught of the Watsons, Cricks and Deoxy ribonucleic acids) .
Coming back to where I left (or started); one of the ad showed a corpocrat who looked more like a model straight out of Lakme India Fashion Week, pointing his finger at all the onlookers with a tagline “ speak out”. Before another week even starts there came smack another publishing house who did not so far have any issue published for this city and dropped double the number of hoardings all across the place. This one showed some blindfolded, well-attired, almost handsome dudes lost in the thick of life .I don’t exactly remember the punch at the stub. It had something to do with throwing light everywhere and unblind the blind and the blindfolded. The newspaper was a popular one in Delhi according to one of the few millions of readership surveys that go on in the cities every now and then.
The third range of hoarding, which captured the remaining free spaces and conspicuous nooks could be seen within a fortnight from then. This was from a well-established media house who has turned footprints into fossils over the period of time on the Indian media terrain. Days pass sooner than some of us think it would have passed until a day came when I realized the temporary newspaper stand next to the building where I stay suddenly started looking more bulky then ever before. The four legged stand on top of which the innumerable newspapers and magazines rested on a daily basis looked as if a light flutter by a stealthy fart would be enough to cause an irreparable damage to the stand. The bulge due to the weight of the newspapers on the twenty-something year old supposedly peachwood stand could be seen without any ounce of effort.
However it did not take longer than a lizards’ one yard move to figure out why the bulge, bulk and paperweight. Three new newspapers got introduced to the Bombay-masses, newspaper-wallas and the ubiquitous stands. Let alone, the prime-ministers, the ex-prime-ministers-turned-bribe-gobbler-turned-prisoner-now-released-on-bail.,whose faces and clothes would appear on three more cover pages with an astounding regularity. Let me not talk about the dirges for the Indian skipper whose unbeaten series of miscontributions have raised eyebrows and fountainpens of all the possible sports editors this country would ever see till I finish writing this blog. It would only reach more places near teapots on breakfast tables.
The competition could be felt. The three new players had already managed to stir gallons of tested adrenaline among the already existing players. . Thanks to the ninety-four hoardings per newspaper per square kilometers. Too much to take for even the big dons who were running this business in Bombay from times of the Virgin Mary.
One out of these three aforementioned was a Tabloid launched with an intention to street-snatch market share of another one who enjoyed Madonna fame among quite a pie of Bombay. Probably due to certain spicy-gupshups,half-uncensored corner pics and the very fact that it was the only tabloid the city was witnessing till the new one struck.