Hot

I think I have figured out the reason why my blogging proclivity has diminished of late. It is the heat. No, honestly. After a meeting in Gurgaon or wherever, and then the 30-45-60 minute haul back to office, even in an air-conditioned car, with the sun beating down on your every pore, turning your skin a dark shade of dark, the last thing you want to do after you get anywhere - office or home - is to sit down on a computer and type. You need an hour just to recover and then you realise that because you happened to shoot your mouth off in a meeting, "You, know I think if we do XYZ it will be a good idea." Pitching the idea with options, not exactly an idea, a section really, and then your kind editor says, "Great idea, I like the name, why don't you implement it. Now!"
Oops!
Some colleagues and peers complain that their problems are to do with the fact that their ideas never get accepted, recently one was distraught that a suggestion he made on the medical instruments market was dropped because of unsympathetic editors. Well, I can't blame the editors there, but, if you get into a system and know exactly what sort of stories work and how to pitch you get into the opposite situation - you know you can pitch five things and if everything goes wrong all five get accepted and suddenly you find yourself with... well, traveling to Gurgaon much more than you would like to. Particularly when it is almost 40 degrees outside. The only saving grace to that is that there are a lot of nice places to eat in Gurgaon now and the Landmark store is also there. And to be honest, the Expressway has made life slightly easier.
Then again, if you happened to be a gregarious animal like me, you decide to complicate your day further by sticking with friends all night long. Till the end of the World Cup match, no matter how boring.
Anyway...
I now come to an important topic of discussion - whats up on KG Marg? Recently, the Sports Editor of the newspaper had a showdown with the Editor and quit. However, the Editorial Director asked him not to leave and supposedly told him that the issue 'will get sorted out'. And now it gets more interesting, the Ed in a meeting proclaimed that he didn't read the paper's supplement, and while you can't blame him for avoiding trash, the ED had a point to make, "(said supplement) is part of the paper too and you are the Ed."
Hmm. Methinks that there is about to be some activity at that building.
And what about the 'Daily Today' (that is what we will call it for now), the weird creation between the Daily Mail and the India Today Group? Well, no editor can be found for love of money just now, but I have heard someone from KG Marg is on his way there. Will it work? See, I'll be honest, the Times has improved dramatically over the past year, really. Parts of it are still ill-informed and trashy, but there has obviously been a lot of work in that paper. And in almost every city the paper is present, they have the best city coverage. I could not have said that about Times Delhi a couple of years ago, where city reportage bordered on the inane. Now, it must be said city reportage is quite solid. In fact, it is the best.
And the thing about a newspaper is that no matter how solid your Nation, Business and Sports sections, unless you have a solid city team it just won't sell. Just look at the travesty that is MetroNow, it is so bad, it is really not funny. I mean even the jokes are unfunny. They started out well, but it has been a fairly downhill road from there. Whereas Papermint has recently been coming out with some really nice stories (though one might argue only ONE person has been coming up with the stories) of late. But, they should have the the railway shit in peace!