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I’m not really sure how the internet works in space. I’m sure in whatsoever way it does, it’s a pretty big deal because it signals the ubiquity of human technology in a place where few humans can and do exist. And there are a lot of people out there who appreciate this fact.

The Hindu (TH), my employer, isn’t one of them. So when Commander Hadfield tweeted an article from the newspaper from the ISS on April 3, TH’s insistence on placing an article on its front page to celebrate the “occasion” I thought was an opportunistic and hypocritical response.

Worse, I spent almost an hour in the afternoon fending off demands from many of my colleagues that I write the piece, but when the Editor called me at 8 pm to ask me to do the same thing, I obliged with nary a protest.

I often like to wishfully think how different TH would be if the Times of India (ToI) weren’t in the picture. Sure, it’d still be struggling to make peace with the fact that it’s currently treading a taut financial rope, but how much or differently would it seek to promote itself? The piece I wrote today was obviously a “Take that, ToI!” sort of piece. Without ToI, I’d expect TH not to have pushed a front-page self-advertisement.

ToI’s coming, in these ways and many others, into the south Indian market was a great thing to have happened. More than anything, it jolted TH out of its managerial and financial torpor. Next, it drove TH to embrace many attitudes, tactics, policies and mechanisms that the paper was avoiding to maintain its staid (and vastly outdated) image. Finally, it gives me an option to justify my abhorrent action: “I did it for TH in its battle against ToI.”

But deep, deep, deep down, I know I didn’t. I’m just Shameless Byline Hunter.