The newspaper 'editorial' piece

Back in the days when I was still a school boy, one of my Uncles had exhorted me sternly to start reading newspaper ‘editorials’ to improve upon my English communication capabilities. This was his angry outburst to my terribly misspelled simple English words and my poor usage of English sentences in an essay I had casually written as part of a mandatory school vacation exercise. His continued  tirade against my English writing skills was rubbing off on me poorly.  I was riled at his regular admonishing, but couldn’t do anything about it, though.  He was my eldest maternal uncle.  Finally, I took his advice, rather hesitantly and wistfully.  The main issue was my family was not subscribing to any newspapers as we couldn’t afford it at that point of time.  However, much later, when our financial position improved, we started subscribing to an English language newspaper 'Deccan Herald', which was quite popular in Bangalore, but then it was too late.  My brains' ability to make new neural connections or pathways, were almost in its last phases, to wit, I was too old, all of 16 or 17 years of age!

It was the late sixties.  The common middle class people were not in the habit of subscribing to newspapers nor had any TV news channels to watch as Televisions were still not available to us, then.  Only radios were the common man’s source for entertainment, information and knowledge.  There were roadside libraries in a few old and established areas of Bangalore like Gandhi bazar, Malleswaram and Chamarajapet and of course, the main City Central Library in South end Jayanagar.  I was a frequent Library visitor. You could see me there, any hour of the day, quietly ensconced in the newspapers section. After getting bored with the newspapers’ drab news coverage, I would slowly wander into the inside of the Library section where fiction books were stored searching for racy and trashy thrillers. The likes of James Hadley Chase or Earl Stanley Gardner was my first choice.  You guessed it right!  These books were far and few and had been snatched up by the regular Library members.  My desire was to secure a membership to the Library which was again, unaffordable to me in those early days.  To cut a long story short, I was always on the lookout to borrow these thrillers from friends and a couple of Uncles.  I have quite a collection now, apparently, there are no takers for the books anymore.  Glued to the phones or TV screens, the book-reading era has passed into oblivion. 

Back to the story.  My newspaper 'editorial' hunting took me to different branches of the City Central Libraries, which had mushroomed across various localities of Bangalore in the later years.   Instead of reading newspapers, I had become enamored of the thrillers of the day. Again, you ask me, what’s the point of all this.  Well, in my defence, the point I am trying to make is, I never quite caught on to reading newspaper 'editorials' which, perhaps, is the cause of my poor writing abilities; below par choice and usage of words.  My Uncle would have strongly rebuked me for not sticking to his advice, had he been alive now. 

Nevertheless, the point I am trying to make is that, whatever be your English language skills, the world goes on, with or without learning or acquiring English knowledge.  Precisely, it is not a required skill in effectively doing your job, whatever that is, unless if you are in the profession of English newspaper production.