Back to school

Today was strange... i went to staples .. and its strange that we now have staples to go to .. and it is the back to school time. So you see these little kids with their mommies and daddies all over the place. I was staring at a lot of stationery at every shelf and look at the notebooks and pencils . We didn't have so many options when we were little sounds like ages ago. So I picked up a note book priced at INR 100.. :) it took me back to the time .. if you are from my home you would remember - Poonam Stores was the name of the little dingy store on the centre street of our little town. June would be back to school and never as late as August. Red and blue line books to start with your first alphabets - aimed at perfection. Single line for the other stuff and square line for math. Cost of the book if i remember correctly anywhere between 5 to 10 depending on the number of pages. Once you bought the books you had to cover them. That covering was an art perfected by parents or an elder sibling in one of the higher classes. So you first used newspaper if you couldn't afford the brown paper. It rained and it poured and the rain water would drip through your school bag if it wasn't waterproof. So you had to use a plastic bag to save your books and to save your grades. Then came the brown paper plastic coated covers - they were there to save you the embarrassment.Those little little things. Your stationery never went beyond a Camlin box with a geometry set. Natraj pencils and hero pens were the way to go!

I am glad I remember all of this!