Sid started school last month. As he embarked on a new academic year, I was endowed with this tremendous responsibility of buying a new set of books and readying them. Well, the point being that, I had to cover the notebooks and the text books with brown laminated paper. It is but fair because the brown cover will help the books survive through the year, given Sid's challenging ways of handling them.

I got into the process. I picked each book and cut the required size of the brown cover and got down to the grind of covering them. The act also involved labelling of all the books. This posed a problem because we didn't have any.

The drill of finding labels was even tougher because of Sid's large and generous heart — meaning, his liking for every known cartoon character on the planet. As I looked at the sticker labels that are available these days, I was amazed at how much things have changed. I was reminded of my own childhood in a tiny village in southern India.

Back then my school never stressed the need for covered books. The act of buying brown paper covers was unheard of. Sometimes, we did cover the book with a page of a paper calendar.

Sid was clearly amused when he learnt that. "Calendars?" he asked rather innocently. Well, I understand Sid because children these days don't see many yearly calendars and definitely not those long sheets of glistening paper with scenes of lush green meadows.

Yet, we never had the luxury of sticking a label. Sid couldn't begin to fathom that sticking a label could be termed ‘luxury'. "Where did you write your names?" he asked rather innocently. Well, I explained, "We wrote them on the coloured binding sheets. Sometimes, we wrote them out on white sheets of paper and stuck them on the sheet with not a glue stick but a grain of cooked rice!"

My son looked at me as if I were a Neanderthal. Actually, I even surprised myself as I narrated my childhood incidents. I don't think we even remotely considered asking my parents to buy us ‘gum', as glue was popularly known then.

Unnecessary expenditure

The only thing I do remember was my longing for labels. I knew of only one girl in our entire class flashing her books because she was in possession of those precious little white leaflets stuck on her books.

My dream of owning printed labels came true much later during school life. We didn't buy them as they were deemed ‘unnecessary expenditure' but I just got lucky. It was one summer morning when dad took me to buy a pair of shoes. As the man packed my shoes, he pulled out a bunch of labels and gave them for free. I clearly remember my excitement on the way home. The fact that I now owned a new pair of shoes was clearly not the reason.

Back then we had no sticker labels but paper ones. Most people either used a sticky and smelly gum or a grain of cooked rice. They both did the trick. My mum always insisted we use rice. I never liked it.

Sometimes, when the rice was not pressed evenly, the labels wouldn't have a smooth finish. Yet, the whole process of labelling my books was a great experience.

Now, as I watched Sid, he pulled out the rectangular pieces and stuck it with ease. There were no sticky fingers or messy room. But then when I compared my joy and excitement of owning paper labels to Sid's own selection of the fanciest sticker labels, I know who the winner is. For once, I did beat my son.

 

Sudha Subramanian is an independent journalist based in Dubai.