Three centuries on, the newspaper refuses to retire

A first-person elegy for print in the age of the scroll

In a reflective essay published on The Times of India's blogs platform, the newspaper itself speaks — personified as a centuries-old companion of humankind — tracing its own evolution from the first printed newspaper in Europe in 1609 to its flowering in India, and its uneasy but ultimately reconciled coexistence with television, the mobile phone, and now artificial intelligence.

"Ever since my evolution more than three centuries ago, I have been the cynosure of human eyes," the narrator begins. "I was born in Europe in 1609 as a printed newspaper, but it was in India that I truly came into my own."

That Indian flowering came in 1780, with the birth of the country's first newspaper, the Bengal Gazette, published from Calcutta, then the capital of British India. "Little did anyone imagine that this modest beginning would herald an enduring relationship between Indians and the printed word," the piece notes, recalling how it was "welcomed into homes, discussed over tea and sometimes even fought over!"

Witness to history

The newspaper recalls its "glorious prime" across two centuries, becoming "almost a family member" in Indian households. It describes witnessing "World Wars, the Indian freedom movement, the advent of nuclear warfare, political upheavals, scientific discoveries, human triumphs and follies," faithfully carrying them all while also exposing "human ambition, power struggles and the occasional megalomaniac."

During the freedom struggle, publications such as Amrita Bazar Patrika, The Hindu and Hindustan Times became "powerful vehicles for nationalist thought," carrying "the voices, aspirations and struggles of a nation yearning for freedom." On 15 August 1947, "I witnessed history being made," the narrator writes, as newspapers across the country brought readers the momentous news of Independence along with inspiring messages from national leaders and photographs that captured a newly liberated nation.

The essay also fondly recalls R. K. Laxman's unforgettable 'The Common Man' and 'You Said It' in The Times of India, whose "gentle witty satire often said more than a thousand words could." For many readers, the morning ritual — "Where is the paper?" — once felt as though "the fate of the nation depended upon locating me."

The digital disruption

But the narrator acknowledges its decline. "The massive boom of the television in the last quarter of the previous century gave me a staggering blow. Then the new millennium brought me a formidable rival: the mobile phone." The piece marvels, with no small jealousy, at how "something so small can contain newspapers, television, cinema, music, shopping, banking, games, gossip and enough information to make one's head spin" — and how it delivers breaking news "while I am still peacefully sleeping on the printing press."

The narrator watches humans "scroll, swipe, tap, repeat," perpetually connected to the world yet "sometimes disconnected from the person sitting beside them." Children of the digital age "hardly know what I am," it admits, though it refuses to blame them: "When parents themselves have abandoned me, how are the young expected to develop an affection for my rustling pages?"

Yet the newspaper refuses bitterness. Quoting Tennyson — "How dull it is to pause, To make an end, To rust unburnished, not to shine in use!" — it insists it has "no intention of becoming redundant just yet." Its "arrogance of youth has mellowed into gratitude," and it now marvels at human ingenuity rather than feeling threatened by it.

An appeal to grow old together

As newer generations, from Gen Z to "the AI native generation," invent the unimaginable, the narrator hopes to survive "in some new avatar" rather than becoming merely "a collector's item, a nostalgic relic of another age." It signs off with Browning's words: "Grow old along with me! The best is yet to be."

The closing plea is for progress that remains "people-friendly, eco-friendly and, above all, humane" — and for readers to keep reading and thinking, sparing "a little affection for an old friend who has been telling your story for more than three centuries." To coexist in harmony, the narrator suggests, with "a cup of tea in one hand, a newspaper in the other and a mobile phone resting for some time somewhere nearby."