Just a Box

Moving to and working from a new office is kind of fun. So I was given a laptop ( a cute one), notebook ( the real one with paper and stuff), a pen, a pencil, a sharpner and an eraser as part of my startup kit. Looking at so many school-like items I began to think.... "Pencil Box". Then I began to think "when was the last time I had a pencil box". Never is what my friends would say if you asked them.

Never is what they would say if you asked them when was the last time I owned a pen, a pencil or an eraser. Nobody brings Pencil Boxes to work.

You are considered to be a nerd if you brought along a pencil box to work. I don't think people bought one of those things to college either.

A loser ( if you are a boy - girls bring pencil boxes)is what you could be called, if you brought one to college when it wasn't examination season (But I would never call such people a nerd or a loser because I am indebted to them . So I guess high school was the last time one was expected to roam around with a pencil box.

In 1983-1985 - Remember the box that was released after we won the 1983 World Cup. The one with Kapil Dev holding the trophy aloft. Later, there was one with Gavaskar holding the Champions trophy aloft. The most famous Pencil box I have seen is the dark red one with black stripes - that goes by the brand name called "Natraj". It had a painting of Nataraja on the box. Buying a new geometry box was the only known form of pleasure to many primary-secondary school kids ( 2 years before I saw a middle-aged man carefuly inspecting a Pencil Box in Landmark in such a style that made me wonder, if it still is -- to some grown ups too).

And then India started opening up her doors to imports - and you had the imported two side pencil boxes ( that time it didn't matter that they came in girly pinks and baby blues) - the magnetic locks were an instant hit - especially if you could quitely slip back into class during PT class and take your worst enemy's box and break it up so as to get access to the magnets. And then there were the really RICH kids who had their dads bringing them the james bond style ones - where you press a button and loo - out comes a small holder for the pencil from the back etc etc.

Well lets come back to the topic of the Geometry Box - I have to admit it was exciting then to buy a new geometry box. Ofcourse I'd loose all the contents in, lets say, about a week. Then I'd go and pick a fight with anybody who I suspected, had stolen my stuff. There are ways to mark your pencil box items as yours. People sometimes wrote their intials on the back of their sharpner/eraser. But given that at any point in time, any school had 12 murugan's, 27 senthils , 72 Anands, 98 Subramanians (including the History teacher and Headmaster) and about
273 Srinivasan's (including the Principal and definetly including the Math teacher as all Math teachers as per Education Act of 1951 had to be named or renamed as Srinivasan) - it became very difficult to claim ownership of a sharpner with just a name on it. A stamped affidavit, duly notarized and finger printed was what was in order.

I also strongly believe that the Pencil Box is a mirror of a person's pysche. I have observed many girls, who seem to protect their pencil box(es) with fierce territorial intensity. They seem to have a peculiar habit of arranging their pens and pencils in such a way that all the nibs and sharpened ends face the same side. I say peculiar only because these pencils and pens would still continue to function and perform their duties if they were arranged differently.

However, these ladies were (and presume still are) not in agreement with me on the topic of arrangement Vs actual functionality. They, for some reason, get agitated if you try and change that order.

From these observations, I think a pencil box can be associated with certain psycological patterns that are present in the deep dark recesses of the human mind. Their Pencil Boxes, were neatly organized with 2 erasers ( the second one was for the express purpose of loaning it to me), a sharpner, a set square, a scale, 3 pencils (ditto), and 2 pens ( ditto). - from ' mam , I forgot to bring my pencil - followed by the ritual pinching of the ear and being kicked out of class" we slowly graduated to "machi or hello! forgot my pen.. please gimme one.. " that I let out almost every other class. They of course had clear counts on the number of pens they had loaned to me, including counts on the pens I had not returned.

We now proceed to meticulously investigate the contents of the geometry box. The geometry box came with a particular pattern and arrangement.

There were plastic partitions inside the box, like rooms in a house. One room would house the eraser. The sharpner sometimes also went into a separate room. I suppose both were moody enough to warrant privacy. The pencil, compass and the divider would roam around the box freely ( which is why you get this dodack dodack sound when children with school bags run. It is the sound of the pencil, compass and the divider madly knocking the walls of the box, demanding to be let out). Below these three items were the scale, a protractor ( dunno what the hell this name means) and two other pieces which call themselves the SetSquare.

Let me digress to a whole new topic for a moment. Whats the deal with these two things called set squares? What purpose do they serve? I swear!! in all my years in school geometry, I have never used them. Not even in exams. Come to think of it -- what does the divider do ? I have to say in the house of a pencil box -- the pencil, sharpner, eraser, scale are the real bread winners. The others are, as the popular phrase to refer to unemployed youths go, "thandasoru" ( na-laayak in hindi).

Some people say that, they have seen these set squares been used for drawing parallel lines. Bull Shit! I say, A scale ( and some times even a protractor) can be used by us warriors to draw a parallel line. We don't need no setSquare. Nobody has seen a divider been used for anything other than tying a rubberband inbetween and use it as a sling or to drill a hole into your new lubber and disfigure it so that it claims to resemble the famous discuss of lord krishna. The 2 setsquares and the divider are two of the biggest scams in the geometry box industry. Since the manufacturers of the geometry box were illiterate, the makers of plastic who produced the scales and the protractor, cheated them, and passed along two other vague set of plastic instruments and an iron thing into the geometry box. The ignorant students, when they first saw a geometry box in 4th grade, they waited and waited. Hoping that someday when they grew big enough, they would get to use these three things. Maybe they thought using them was gaining some sort of an adulthood. That day , I am sorry to break it you, ladies and gentlemen, never came.

Some of the readers are in the US - for your sake - I need to be carefull to say "eraser" instead of "rubber" for obvious reason. More so for my wider audience - this is an ephiphany ( the other one being "five into four" means nothing in Uncle sam's land and you have to say " five times four" if you wanna say it at all).

The eraser aka lubber has underwent more incarnations that the 10 avatars of vishnu. Believe the makers of the simple eraser wanted to compete with micro soft in more upgrades and versions - They can't believe it can only be used for erasing stuff. So the eraser manufacturers made the erasers smell good - out came the scent lubber.

The children tried to write stuff on it, bite it and even tried to eat it. Sometimes they poked the eraser with the compass and the pencil.

Right this moment, children are still probing ( or is it groping? ) the eraser trying find some untapped potential. The manufacturers, just to make things more exciting, went a step ahead and started sending half-dressed erasers into the house of the geometry box. So that, later, the children could strip them naked. yeah! Then there were imported erasers -- "Staedlers" ( or something that spelt like it). They were big and strong. They came in tough wrappers and did not undress that easily.

They were big but too soft to cut and make stencils - to be used exclusively on holi day on white shirts with blue ink ( doesn't matter that the effort left both parties equally drenched in the viscous liquid). Somehow the makers of the eraser have kept the aura of the eraser alive. But for the adults at Govt offices - they had to belive still have to live with the typewriter eraser - a weird invention in the form of a blue wheel with a plastic core - think the manufacturers wanted to save them the embarassment of having to make holes into the centre to make them go round and round like kids and instead gave them this plastic core.

Talking on the subject of the box - we need to talk of Ink pens - who can forget the classic BRIL ink pot with its foul smelling ink - whoever gave our teachers the idea that writing with Ball pens did damage to your handwriting and more so ink pens were needed in some convoluted arrangement to help with our hand eye co ordination. The pen manufactures also conspired in making pens whose nibs would never be able to stand of weak of wirting ( punshiment, pinching, pulling and poking included) - the cheap imitations pens with the fake cross logo on the cap were out first primitive implements ( well it would become a longer post if we discuss the chalk, balapom, color chalk etc etc) - slowly these gave way to pilot pens ( I think - the ones with only a few cms of nibs showing - like a marwadhi dulhan ) - they were a welcome innovation - first of all they came with a strange looking contraption with a lubber ( no laughing) ink catridge with a metal intake system - first flaw of the ink pen rectified - no leaks and no need to open the open ( leaving tell tale marks on the thumb and four fingers) to fill ink. Plus they did away with the same drab color comibination giving into to gold caps. They came in dark green, back and blue colors and were a sight to behold - a proud prossession to be exhibited in the centre of the class with all of us droolling over it...and then finally better sense prevailed and we were giving ball pens -reynolds - cheap but excellent pens - white body with color tops - and there was competition from the red leaf pens as well - the sleek transparent bodies with cute red, black or green tops.

The box seems to exude an exotic feeling of mystique and magic that till date keeps tempting children to explore the eraser until the end of time...