मैं आज भी फैंकी हुई पेन्सिल्स उठाता हूँ

I did not grow up relatively poor in the Ahmedabad of the 1960s because every family that we knew of in various neighborhoods was relatively poor. We did not know any better. We did not have the right contrast. Economically, we were lower middle class on the precipice of being middle class, which happened decades later. Culturally, we were at top of the totem pole in terms of being exposed to books, music, language and unimpeachable integrity and values. We knew far more about the world than those in our economic stratum might be expected to know. We were also far better read than most we knew of.

I use this quick background to tell you a short personal story. As I move home, yet again, an almost reflexive childhood habit refuses to go. While packing up the house and storing the household goods away and cleaning, I often come across pencils and pens under a bed here or a sofa there. Even today, I pick up every one of those pencils and pens and rehabilitate them. That stems from a sense of childhood scarcity where pencils were used past the lowest stub of their lead and wood. Sometimes, I suspect we wrote using our index finger because of the remnant of the lead on it. (Literary exaggeration.) Pencils were not necessarily expensive of themselves but they were to us as a family. We were not unique in our scarcity. Like I said entire neighborhoods were full of families that did the same thing.

This morning I picked up half a dozen pencils and packed them away which is rather silly but as I said it is a reflex action. It is like a muscle memory. Pencils with an eraser were a rare possession in my childhood. They were guarded with excruciating care. We used to call an eraser a rubber which here in America used to be a euphemism for a condom. Come to think of it, they both erase, one words and the other conception.

While picking up those pencils this morning, I was reminded of the famous line from the movie Deewar where Amitabh Bachchan says, “मैं आज भी फैंके हुए पैसे नहीं उठाता.” (Even today, I do not pick up money flung at me.)

Mine is reverse. “मैं आज भी फैंकी हुई पेन्सिल्स उठाता हूँ.”