Practicing Alphabet Writing in the 50's

Recently I came across a facebook post wherein details  about some children visiting a museum of local history was reported.One of the exhibit was a small wooden desk which had an inkwell.When children were asked the guess the purpose of the hole in the desk ,they came out with interesting guesses,none of them correct.Of course they were not expected to know about the writing practices prevailing half a century earlier.

This made me go back in time to mid 50's when I was 5 to 7 years old.I felt that sharing this experience would be good for the posterity.

We were stationed at Bareilly (UP) and I was attending Railway School there.We were learning to write Hindi alphabet and  had to practice writing them on a wooden plank (called Takhti) shaped as shown below.

For writing we had to use a writing implement made out of bamboo-reed.It was an interesting experience to see the process of preparing its writing edge. Our teacher used to have with him a gleaming sharp knife.We used to go to him one by one with out our blunt-edged reed piece.He used to methodically carve out an edge about 2-3 mm.Then he would make a neat slit to the edge to hold the ink.We called it
Kalam.(See pic below).

Now what about the ink? We had to prepare the ink ourselves and carry an ink-pot to the school.We used to buy some white lime stone pieces (called it Khadia).We filled water into the ink-pot, powder the lime stone pieces,put it into the ink-pot and shake it well and presto!The ink was ready to use.

We  dipped our Kalam into the ink-pot and wrote on the Takhti. Whatever we wrote appeared to be faintly  visible initially.It was fun to watch the letters gradually turning bright white as soon as the water of the ink dried up.

Using such an elaborate  system of carrying Takhti to the school, carve a Kalam and prepare the ink was supposedly  to 'improve' our handwriting.

Once our Takhti was full with the letters  and the teacher approved it,we would promptly soak a piece of cloth and wipe the Takhti to have a 'clean slate' ready to have a fresh go at it.

Carrying the Takhti was a bit inconvenient.But then it had its own use.In case of a fight with our mates,this proved to be a formidable weapon,both to hit and also as a shield to defend ourselves.In case of sudden unexpected showers,we could use it as an umbrella.

A Matter of Salvation

This was published in Deccan Herald sometime back.

CHILDHOOD WAS A STEAL

Whenever I try to remember my childhood, I find quite a few incidents related to stealing. At the risk of losing my “respectability” (imaginary), I want to narrate a few of them.

Bareilly had a sugar factory and naturally a large quantity of sugar cane from the nearby fields found its way to Bareilly in the cane crushing season by the goods trains. These, if I remember correctly, were brought in closed as well as open wagons. Well, an open wagon full of juicy sugarcanes (apparently unprotected) was irresistible bait for the children’s brigade. We would swoop down on them and try to pull out as much sugarcane as we could handle and........ bolt.

There was a practical problem though. Our tiny hands were unable to reach the high wagons. But then there were elders ready to lend us a helping hand,”helping” themselves in the process.

Eating fresh, juicy and “stolen” sugarcane using bare hands and teeth was an incomparable BLISS!

My experiments with coin-deformations !

During the fifties, when I was in the middle school, we were staying in railway quarters in Bareilly in UP. Our house was just next to the railway station with its front door hardly 15 ft from the railway line.

Naturally all our extra-curricular activities were centered around anything and everything to do with the railways. We used to observe dozens of different types of trains passing in front of our house.

Once a very strong desire arose to test as to what would happen to a coin if we let the train go over it. There it started. One of my playmates got a wild thought- what if the train slips while going over it and crashes?! I did not agree with him , though a doubt persisted in my mind too.

As luck would have it, my cousin from Delhi came to spend time with us. With nothing else to do, we were all set to start with our experiments. In those times, all types of coins were in vogue--round ones, square ones and those with a hole, and those made of copper, nickel or brass.

Now we tried various coins flicked surreptitiously without letting our parents know. After sometime, we became experts in predicting the shape that the coin would take after getting repetitively pounded under the wheels of the train. In some cases the coins got flattened and stuck to the track . With great difficulty we were able to dislodge it. After placing the coin we used to put our ear to the track to try to guess from which side the train would arrive. Since playing near the track was certainly not a safe activity we had to be watchful not to get caught by the elders. Once we placed a heavy duty needle (the type used to to sew quilts). We were thrilled to find that it took the shape of crude knife ! (The next day I overheard my mother inquiring from our domestic help whether she had seen this needle somewhere.)

With the data and the collection of exhibits we could have produced a voluminous research report with the title running something like "Predicting shapes and sizes of various coins when subjected to wheels of various shapes and sizes belonging to goods and passenger trains of Indian Railways". May be our exhibits would have found a place in the railway museum.