The style of writing the imposition was also unique. Only the first line of on the page was written as a whole sentence, i.e. “I will not talk in the class”. From the next sentence onwards till the 100th time, it used to be written word by word, i.e, 99 times I, followed by 99 times will and so on, which would make sure that the imposition had no effect on me as I did not really give a thought to what I was repenting for.
In order to combat the sudden deluge of ink on to my science classwork notebook, I used to have a secret weapon in my Natraj pencil box. It was the piece of chalk that I would have snagged from the teacher’s desk when I used to pass through it during the intervals. I still remember the wonderful art that we used to come up with by soaking parts of the chalk over the ink. The thrill of watching the ink being sucked in and flow through the chalks length is something enjoyable at any age.
Then it was time for breaking the chalk into bits and throwing randomly at the first bencher across the next row of seats! Boy! The fun that we had looking at the poor geek being hit with the chalk and he turning back with a pathetic look, trying hard to figure out who the culprit was. That was fabulous!
Then, there was this thin refill pen that used to be the able substitute for my Hero pen, in the event of all the ink drying up. Almost everyday there used to be those 5 minutes of fun, when I used to use the various laws of physics to make that thin little thing work. First it would be to adeptly remove the pointed metal portion from the top without staining my teeth. This part of the activity was seldom successful without tasting the bitter Ballpoint pen ink.
Then the next part of the adventure was to sandwich the open-ended refill between the palms and rapidly do a rubbing motion, generating the much necessary heat to melt the ink inside the refill. Most of the times, this wouldn’t work, necessitating the blowing of air from one side. This would require great attention in order to make sure that the molten ink doesn’t squirt out of the other end. Once the ink peaks out of the other end, akin to lava emerging from a volcano, it was time to seal it with the metallic pointed nib, which by now would have fallen to the ground. After few minutes of frantic searching, it would be discovered near the opposite bench, happily lying near the dusty rubber eraser.
I got reminded of all this,recently when I saw some kids here in the U.S.A, buying so many stationery items such as 3 packs of micro-tip pencils/2 packs of Uniball pens/various scented erasers etc as part of the "Back to school" seasonal purchase.I wondered if these kids were being pampered with so much unnecessary stuff or was I denied something when I was a child?
-Raapi
Posted by rajesh | 
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