Paupers and pick-pocketers

Pocket money was a rare privilege as children were forbidden to touch cash.

Pocket money was an entitlement I was heartlessly denied by my father. He did not even allow us children to look at money, let alone hold it. The one note that floats before my eyes even now is the old ten rupee bill, which carried the emblem of Ashoka Pillar lions on one side and the image of a mediaeval ship on the other. I remember looking at it longingly whenever my father opened his purse. Only once did I come into its possession as a boy, when I received a money order from Ananda Vikatan, a prominent Tamil weekly, as remuneration for a crow and fox story I wrote for its children’s page.

I felt like a Prince when the postman gave me a crisp ten rupee note. But the ecstasy did not last long. My father took it away, saying I was not old enough to hold a high-value currency note.

Purses in those days were big since the currency notes were big—the five rupee note then was bigger than today’s five hundred rupee note. Of course, I hadn’t seen a hundred rupee note until I was twenty. It was rare even for my father to come into its possession, as his salary itself was a princely Rs 200. While my father never gave me a rupee, which I would have been very glad to keep in my shirt pocket, my close pal, RK, enjoyed abundant pocket money, which was in reality pick-pocket money. He generously helped himself from his father’s money pouch.

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As the only Purohit in the neighbourhood, his father’s services were in great demand, particularly on Amavasya, or new moon days, when people offered water oblations to their ancestors. He returned home with his money pouch overflowing with coins. Purohits in those days didn’t carry leather pouches or accept currency notes—both were considered impure; only metal coins were kosher. RK filled his pockets from his father’s coffer and went around buying kites, tops, and even pets.

Another friend, Babu, earned his pocket money. He would massage his uncle’s legs every day and was paid fifty paisa per hour. Adaikappan, a rich classmate from Sri Lanka whose father owned a talcum powder factory, used to get a daily pocket money of Rs 10–300 per month, which was a hundred more than my father’s salary. He was generous and bought us popsicles and mango slices.

Decades ago, children in orthodox middle-class households like ours were strictly forbidden to touch cash.

Not so now. They learn how to milk an ATM using the debit cards of their parents.