The 'back-to-school' drill

The wrapping of books was a 'late-vacation, pre-school' project for us children.

This sultry May week saw my sons and spouses scurrying out with children in tow. It was the time for their pre-school shopping. Soon, car loads of school paraphernalia — books (with enough material of the specified quantity, quality and colour to cover them), school bags, lunch boxes, water bottles, rain coats, belts, ties, uniforms, socks — landed in the house. 

The click-clack of the scissors cutting into the covering sheets joined the raised voices of parents warning the children not to meddle with the work. Lo! Another academic year has started in right earnest with all the seriousness it demands! All this took me decades back to my Economics class, where we learnt the concept of ‘roundabout production’ — here, the production of a boat starts with the mining of the metal required to make the axe to cut the tree with wh­ich to obtain the wood to make the boat!

School reopening had its own excitement during our times too; but it was of an intimate and personal kind and the list of school paraphernalia was much shorter. Though the smell of new books did thrill us, old ones handed down from senior siblings were valued for the knowledge they imparted. A blob of home made paste and some pieces of twine were all that was needed to give them a new lease of life.

Wrapping the books and preparing for the new academic year was a ‘late-vacation, pre-school’ project that children took interest and pleasure in. Siblings fought over old calendar sheets with be­autiful pictures to cover their new books with while those with photos of gods and goddesses draped books of the subjects in which the child was weak in and hence needed their blessings!

“Reduce, Recycle and Reuse” may be new slogans of environmentalists to save the planet, but they were present in spirit much earlier! Elder siblings with an artistic hand cut out labels from plain sheets of paper and wrote the names and details of the children. Though these books lacked uniformity and homogeneity, they were unique and easily identifiable and were free from boring regimentation. 

School bags were home-designed, dainty ones that held essential but minimal items unlike the present back-breaking burdens. Stitching the initials of the children on new umbrellas lest they got mixed up in school and mending the old ones by darning the holes in them (for, a new academic year coincided with the onset of monsoon) was part of the activities assigned to elder siblings.

The humble slate was very much in vogue till the primary section during our times. Besides being an effective way of conserving paper, it was a good jog for the brain that was coaxed into visualising and recalling the facts and figures written on it and later erased! Perhaps, it is this training that I got in my childhood that still helps me settle my grocery bills mentally even before the shopkeeper starts jabbing his calculator!

Parents seldom raised their blood pressures over the child’s report cards  back then when education was an end in itself rather than a means to an end!