How to keep yourself busy: Read up anything you can lay your hands on

How to keep yourself busy: Read up anything you can lay your hands on

Are you the one who will read any scrap of paper lying around? I know some who do. This includes my father-in-law. He felt so lonely that to while away time, besides peering through every page of three newspapers we used to subscribe, he would pick up any scrap of paper and start reading. Newspaper inserts, handbills, invitations etc don't miss his eyes.

Many years ago, grocery shops in neighborhood used to sell things wrapped in old newspaper. It was a skillful job those days to transfer dal, rice, sugar, rava and the like to a piece of rectangular scrap paper and fold it such that nothing further, like stapling, tying with thread / twine / suthli etc is needed. The folding itself would be sufficient to provide stability to keep stuff stay put in the packet.   Some vendors used to make a paper one of sorts, fold a tiny bit at the bottom of the cone, put grocery item into it and seal it at the top without glue – just the fold would hold it fine. In the case of cone packings jute thread may be used. In my school days, paper scrap recovered from such grocery packets would be used for other purposes and re-cycled. I don't know if some of you remember we used such scraps of paper for swiping shit off a toddler's butt.

Chennai publishes a Tamil weekly called Kumudham. In my college days Kumudham used to publish a column called 'pottalam'. The author of this column depended on newspaper scrap scavenged from grocery stores deliveries for his content-inspirations. He will refer to something he chanced to read and comment on it. I liked his innovative sourcing of subjects to write about and the outcome as well.

By now you would have realized what I am coming to. I am advising senior citizens not to while away whining all the time about being lonely. Read up any scrap you can grab. There could be a treasure of your lifetime, if you are lucky. You will at least discover that many you never knew have died, if what you are looking at is obituary part.

Dr P Vyasamoorthy
30 Gruhalakshmi Colony, Secunderabad 500015 Telangana
LL 040-27846631 / Mobile: 9490804278

His capacity to understand simple things is so abysmally low that I am  exasperated and exhausted every time I write to him