News can be so depressing. Especially the Kerala newspapers.

I never learnt to read or write my mother-tongue Malayalam in school. When you spend
your schooling years in North India, Malayalam would be the last language to figure in the
school curriculum anyway. So, I learnt English, Hindi and even Sanskrit (the language of the Gods - the Indian ones ie.).

But since we spent 2-months in Kerala every year during our school vacations, my parents thought it would be a good idea for us to learn Malayalam from a private tutor during our
stay there, just so that we can atleast read the destination boards on the city buses. So we
spent a good part of our vacation studying Malayalam instead of happily spending the time fishing or eating mangoes/jackfruits/cashewnuts etc.

But the tuitions did help and we could not only read the boards, but also got good at reading
the newspapers. Grandpa used to make us read the papers, which served dual purpose - he could know the news without straining himself (his vision was deteriorating) and our language would improve.

Writing Malayalam was tough initially, but I improved quite a lot, due to the frequent letters that I would write to my grandparents, once we returned after our annual vacation. But once phones became easily available and letter-writing became passe, there did not remain much
of a necessity to write letters and over the years, I totally lost touch with the language as far
as writing was concerned.

I still would do a bit of Malayalam reading once-in-a-while, especially while checking out the works of Malayalam authors like Paul Zachariah, M.Mukundan etc because I believe that a
novel is best read in the language in which it was originally rendered by the creator. But,
nowadays reading is mostly limited to reading the newspapers when I am at Kerala, because
my parents generally subscribe to a vernacular daily and buy English papers only on Sundays.

From this recent reading of Malayalam newspapers, the impression I got is that Malayalam dailies are kind of depressing in the content they seem to have. Even on the front page, you
read articles about unnatural (and perfectly avoidable) deaths, which in English dailies would
be snuck away in some obscure corner deep inside the pages.

Sample some of the truly freaky accidents :
1. A guy working in the Army returns home to Kerala on a short vacation. His relative rides down in a bike to pick him up from the railway station. Instead of hiring a cab and being
driven home, our guy takes over the bike and rides home, while the relative comes home in
the cab with the guy's luggage.

Just in front of his home, his bike has an accident and hearing the commotion, his brother
comes out of the house and takes the injured biker to the hospital, all the while not knowing
that he was taking his own brother to the hospital (because he expected his brother to come
in a cab and not on a bike). The guy succumbs to his injuries in the hospital.

2. A guy falls from a height while at his workplace in Bangalore and dies. His family goes to
Bangalore to get his bodyback to Kerala for the final rites. On their way home, the vehicle crashes in a gorge and some 5-7 members of the party die in the mishap.

3. A fire is reported in a town in Kerala and a fire engine rushes to the spot. On the way, the driver looses control and the truck overturns. And guess what ? It topples onto a bike, killing
the 2 guys riding on it. A fireman on the truck also dies in the accident. And all this for a fire accident which ended with no causalties.

And last week the hot topic in Kerala newspapers was about a guy who kills his wife and his
4 kids over a period of a week or 10 days. First he does away with his wife and drops her in
the septic tank. By the time people and police are aware of the mass murders, it has been
close to 2 weeks and her body has disintegrated.

Then he does away with his 4 kids aged between 2 years and 12 years, ties 2 of them up in
sacks and throws them in some thick bushes. And all this to elope with some woman he was having an affair with. I am not sure where he got the idea that he can just walk away after
committing 4 murders and be able to live away from the arms of the law even if he hides anywhere in India ?

If he wanted, he could have just eloped with his paramour, leaving his wife and kids behind.
I don't see the need to kill the poor kids or his wife.

I think I should just stick to English newspapers while at Kerala. The Deccan Chronicle (DC)
would be the best bet, because reading it would make you think that life is just one big party with everyone perpetually living in discotheques or exotic hotels. Too bad that the DC is not available in Kerala though.