Pages from the past

Messages were short because of necessity. My autograph book was merely 5x3 inches.

I recently came across my old autograph album. ‘There is gladness in remembrance,’ I read on the first faded page. That lovely line, which I had borrowed from a long-forgotten source, was my invitation to family and friends to share their thoughts in writing.

My brother responded by drawing two children and adding the caption, ‘This girl and boy are Surya and Suresh.’ Our Hindi master’s comment was even more concise and took the form of a compliment: ‘Surya is a good girl,’ he declared. Mr Sharma probably meant it!

At least, unlike my kid brother, I had not run away from home. One evening, just before tuition, Suresh had tried to flee to our IAF father who was posted in Dinjan, Assam. The little fellow had not left our backyard, let alone New Delhi, when he was intercepted by the tutor he had hoped to escape.

Five years my junior, Suresh was six years old when I started collecting autographs. Even if he had been aware of their significance, he was too young to express himself eloquently. For that matter, even my fellow students, who were orally articulate, were far from communicative on paper. This was not because they agreed with Polonius that ‘brevity is the soul of wit’. Indeed, we hardly knew that Shakespearean character then!

Messages were short, not because of nicety but necessity. My autograph book measured merely 5x3 inches. I acquired a larger one for celebrities on September 9, 1967, after mental calculator, Shakuntala Devi, struggled to squeeze in her sprawling signature.

‘Life is love and love is life,’ wrote Neerja. Those words took on magical meaning in the early 1970s, when Rajesh Khanna was the love of my life! Another classmate also affirmed affection in a quatrain that she claimed to have composed. After stating that bees were drawn to honey, flowers to dew and kings to money, Nilima categorically concluded, ‘And I like you.’ This pleasing pronouncement was somewhat diluted by her signing off with the ungrammatical oxymoron, ‘Your enemiest pal’.

Since talented Nilima was admired, everyone imitated her by penning verse. Unfortunately, most of their efforts lacked originality and tended to be repetitive. I was flooded with, ‘Roses are red and violets are blue,’ which ended either in, ‘Sugar is sweet and so are you,’ or the less flattering, ‘Monkeys like you should be put in the zoo.’ Then, there was the illogical, ‘Drink hot coffee, drink hot tea, Burn your lips and remember me.’

Among these commonplace contributions shines quiet Manjula’s gem: ‘If your lips would keep from slips/ Five things observe with care;/ To whom you speak, of whom you speak/ And how, and when, and where.’ Not original, perhaps, but those wise words are as relevant today as they were five decades ago!