Thursday, September 20, 2007

RuBBeR

The other day I had to hand over a form that I had filled up for an entrance exam. Just as I was heading to the place I had to drop off the form I realized that my form had some mistakes. I had to make changes to the form. Since it was filled with a pencil, it should have been fairly simple to rectify. But then I fished my bag, my car and what not to find an eraser. No!!! Could not find it. I could not find a bloody eraser. I had to look for a stationary store and ask for an eraser, edit the form and do the needful.
The point I want you to notice is that I didn't have an eraser handy. Surprising how my lifestyle had changed over the years. Some time ago, I considered carrying good stationary a matter of prestige. I had the best of the pens, the sharpest pencils, the wackiest of sharpeners and the bestest of the erasers with me. And talking of erasers, its just a long long story.
When I was a kid, kid meaning, I am talking of the days when we used to call an eraser a rubber, the world of rubbers was just too crazy. There used to be these scented rubbers, rubbers which were protruding out of a plastic case with a brush on the other side and a picture on the case which would move if the case moved, rubbers shaped in the shape of Spiderman, He-Man and a whole lot of super heroes, ink rubbers where were either one wierd 3 dimensional parallelograms or round flat ones with a plastic center case, rubbers which used to come in sets of 3 or 4 which were colourful and used in the shape of different fruits or flowers and all.
There also used to be there rubbers which were these cuboids which were white and green. The white part would have colourful letters of the alphabet on them. I remember once when I was in 2nd grade, I had one such rubber with T written on it. Funny story I tell you. Those days, I used to share my bench with this chick. We were class leaders or something I remember and we used to sit in the last bench. On one such day, I realized that I didn't have a scale and this chick had 2. Now I badly wanted one. So I stuck a deal with her. I bit half my T Rubber and exchanged it with the older of the two scales she had. I went home and told about my business brains to my parents. I remember very well that on that day was the first and the only time I have ever been slapped my by dad.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Its beautiful to see the transition of people from rubber to eraser days...you made the trip to the THOSE days very well in this piece...thank you for reminding my rubber days!

Madhavi RK said...

i am yet to transition! i still use the same old vocab! and im not ashamed of it - it happens more so in this place - i also say lift for elevator all the time! talking of scent-rubbers, i had those fruit rubbers u mentioned of. watermelon, orange and banana! and i carried it to each and every exam of my engineering - not that they rubbed (erased) well. scent rubbers are known for leaving a black mark(! literally and otherwise?) on what was once pristine plain white paper. but i read somewhere that citrus smells sharpen the mind - and help keep oneself alert. so i needed to keep smelling them time and again - to ensure i dont doze off in the middle of the exam - since i kept taking 5 minute naps off and on in the middle of the exam hours :P

Priya R said...

That was really good!Had heaps of those erasers and it must run in the family, because I did something similar and got hit too!
Too late to swap/pick family??