Tuesday, August 09, 2005

Day two begins.

I got my First Class train pass made today, despite that I had to spend almost half the journey hanging out of the train. I know most Mumbai-kars will laugh at me, but hey, I'm a Delhi boy. A colleague in office told me that I already look thinner after one day of Mumbai. Brilliant, so instead of joining a gym I should have come to Bombay sooner.
Anyway, I'll start to do some hardcore work from today onwards, start setting up meetings and all. I guess it will still take me a week. I wonder what is up in Delhi. I get the weather forecasts all right but somehow while Bombay feels fun, it still feels somewhat alien.
On a media note, two days of ToI, HT and DNA later - Despite the bleeding heart 'we hate ToI' bloggers infiltrating the interweb, ToI is still by far and away the best of the lot. DNA is colourful and graphic-y, and HT is like HT Delhi - boring and I don't know why the hell Viru the Gujju is trying to make is paper so upmarket. I know that on the day of the rains, Viru had to walk with the hoi-polloi, but HT is an extremely snobbish newspaper. I know Viru loves The Guardian, the problem is that in a town which worships moolah, The Guardians left-wing 'we hate capitalism' philosophy will not sell if HT is going to replicate that. And HT's best business reporters are in Delhi (and Arun Kumar is good!) while the Business section of HT Bombay for lack of another word - sucks. It is pitiable. And a bad business section is what will doom the paper. I might still have issues with HT because of the insane bereaucratic hassles I faced while I worked there, but for gods sake, the Bombay edition is godawful. And so does Poonam Saxena's 'I hate NDTV, Star News rocks' monotone. Poonam, no-one watches Star News other than in airports where we are forced to watch it.
Viru the Gujju needs to get HT Bombay's act together, because DNA while number two to ToI is a shit load better than HT. Today on the train, people were reading ToI, Mid-Day, ET, Free-Press Journal, DNA but no-one (and I notice these things) had a HT in their hands. And don't tell me the 'they've just launched crap', DNA just launched and they are a lot better. I know the market is on a bull-run, but buying into HT is going to be liking throwing money away (while paying for Viru's five-star laundry bill). I don't doubt HT Bombay's survival, I just doubt their appeal.

1 comment:

K said...

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