After a Long Time

I am staring at the "Create Post" screen. Contrary to what certain gentlemen think, neither have I gone into hiding and nor have I moved my blog elsewhere. It's the same ol sob story actually - work and lots of it! (How about some sympathy here???):-) )

Yanways yesterday I was struggling with a simple ALTER TABLE query and when that column stubbornly refused to add itself to the table, my mind wandered from the scary land of SQL into
nice things in life. And I started thinking about my favorite columns in The Hindu. (TOI readers can stop right here. :-) And don't get me started about people in Chennai who read Indian Express on their own volition when Hindu is available! :-) )

One more reason to look forward to Sundays is the Hindu Magazine. My favorite part is "Slice of Life" by V. Gangadhar. His columns always remind me of the stories that Amma and Appa keep telling, about the good old days back then. The sporadic "Short Story" is usually very good and it was one such short story that got me started on Wodehouse (That's another story in itself, and therefore will be another post in itself :-) ) There used to be this column called "Village Vistas" by some Ghosh or someone. I used to like that too in a differert way. I could hardly relate to any character, but it was good reading all the same. Wonder why it isn't on these days. I also read the odd article in "Literary Review" (most of the stuff are a lil high brow for my taste! :-) ). But I like Pradeep Sebastian's Endpaper where he discusses lots of random stuff about books and reading. Art Buchwald's column was pretty entertaining and gave my first insight into American life before the advent of sitcoms and Star Movies.

"Know Your English" is a little cliched and sometimes slightly boring column that comes on Tuesdsays but I read that anyways. The best part about it is the quote at the end which makes it worth reading the whole article. It used be written by Krishnan and Upendran years back and now it's just Upendran's. "Between You and Me" (by the same Krishnan I think) was another favorite Tuesday column. It talked about various issues in the city and always ended on a joke told to a fictious Parthasarathy. Needless to say, it was the joke I looked forward to more rather than city happenings. :-) As a school goer, the science and technology section interested me a lot and I used to cut out the "Question Corner" section with the aim of making a newspaper clipping encycloepedia.

I used to follow "This Day That Age" with a lot of interest until the news about our independance. Somehow it lost its charm after that. Nowadays I check it out once a year, to find out what happened in "that age" on my birthday. :-) And yes the famous Hindu crossword. I have always held in the highest esteem and have never attempted to solve it even once. :-)

The Friday Review, Metro Plus, Young World et al are also good reads, but no regular column in them.

I realise that no column like Paul Krugman's or any sports column or anything of actual importance has made it into my list. Heck, I am made this way! :-) So what's your favorite?