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The following was on the FRONT PAGE of Saturday's Chennai Times (or whatever the newspaper is they stick under our hotel room doors every morning). The following is reprinted, condensed, plagiarized and posted without the written consent of anyone at the Chennai Times, Major League Baseball, or the Obama for President campaign headquarters (or McCain for President, for that matter). With that disclaimer, realize this was considered FRONT PAGE NEWS on Saturday...

FRONT PAGE HEADLINE: "IT cost-cutting enters the loo"

Dateline: Bangalore--Tough times ahead for techies in India. Pretty soon, they may have to carry tissue paper to office, for the US recession seems to have entered even the toilets of Indian software firms.

After slashing salary increments and travel budgets, many domestic firms and MNCs are now cutting on routine items like stationery, canteen snacks, even tissue paper. The once abundant stock of toilet paper, sanitary disposal bags and bottles of handwash are drying up now.

"Tissue paper rolls have disappeared from most gents toilets. Women colleagues say their toilets still have them, although the quality has dropped," said a tech professional working for an MNC.

Another professional, Meera Sridhar, said, "Tissue paper is found only in a couple of toilets out of the nine we have. The face tissues completely vanished a fortnight ago."

"Earlier, I would send a security guard to fetch a pen or writing pad from admin. A few days ago, the security man said I must go and get them personally. I went, only to be told the company has put a stop on stationery to cut costs," said Akhil D, a senior professional in an IT MNC.

The recession has enterd canteens too. "We used to get free snacks, biscuits, popcorn with coffee or tea or badam milk. That has stopped now, although there's no official word yet," said Rajani Pravin, a young BPO executive. The cuts are being implemented very subtly. "Everybody wants to avoid panic and bad publicity," pointed out Lata Manoharan, manger (admin), with a leading domestic tech firm.

"We heard that an American airline has cut a celery leaf from every burger it serves on board. Are companies being penny wise and pound foolish, or will they actually save?" wondered a senior manager of a BPO firm.

This FRONT PAGE ARTICLE was accompanied by a color cartoon featuring a Dilbert-esque character on the toilet reaching for an empty roll of toilet paper. The caption read--"Loo and behold...this is a paper-less office."

Ladies and gentlemen, this is FRONT PAGE NEWS!!

Tomorrow, your pop culture reporter will provide updated research into what might be turning into the Indian equivalent of the OJ murder investigation. Some dude named Krishna was given a lie detector test the other day, which was followed by a "Narco Test"--the liberal administration of sodium pentathol (truth serum)--in the hopes of determining if he was really at home watching cricket with his sister when some truly heinous murders were committed.

Believe it or not, this really was FRONT PAGE NEWS--"IT cost-cutting enters the loo"--somewhere there is a Jay Leno line, or David Letterman "Top 10 List" waiting to be made...