Notebooks, pencils & 'menders'

We were around 30 school children busy buying stationery items. It was the month of May in the 70s of the last century. The schools had opened after summer holidays. Two shops located opposite to each other in Chikkamagaluru, a small sleepy town, were making good business.

Those were the days of few luxuries and limited needs. We bought necessary stationary items like pencils and rubbers. Pencil menders, considered a luxury, were not included in the shopping list as we relied on Panama and Topaz blades, given by our elders after they were used for shaving, to mend our pencils.

Then, schools were not costly. Stationery stores sold text and notebooks and satisfied our hunger. Notebooks, especially ‘Wisdom’, were loved by us including those for copy writing. Wrapping paper to cover our books had great demand. Labels with prints of animals, birds and flowers were given free by the sellers. we used cooked rice as glue in the absence of adhesives to paste the labels.

I remember having bought an English text book and ‘Wren and Martin’ at half-price to study in summer holidays. But my writing style did not change, neither did my speaking skills. During this time, I was asked to practice Hindi.

While in High School, at the coastal town of Mangalore (now Mangaluru), there were many instances of small thefts reported daily of our priced possessions: a ‘foreign’ rubber, a compass, and last but not least scales (Adikolu, in Tulu). Geometry boxes too would suddenly disappear. Often, rubbers gone missing led to petty quarrels only to end peacefully in compromise.

A teacher in my school inspired us to save writing paper, which prompted us to visit a printing press nearby with unused ruled and unruled sheets from our notebooks. We received a bound book that we used as a rough book for everything.

As we moved to higher classes ink-pens became a passion and Brill ink a favourite brand, with it came an ink filler and ink eraser. We used pieces of chalk to roll over pages to absorb spilled ink. Ink pens were discarded as Reynolds ball pens entered the stationery shops. Reynolds in the left pocket of the shirt was self explanatory.

I was reminded of all these when I recently saw two children bargaining for a geometry box in a stationary shop as schools opened again after a gap of two Pandemic Years.