PENS. PENPALS AND SOME MORE

 Writing is an important form of expression. Writing systems were created all over the world independent of each other. When exactly did writing start is a matter of serious discussion, which I will not indulge in right now. Suffice to say that as human beings began to live in communities, the need to record and manage information would have been felt. It is said that writing was developed 5000 years ago in Middle East. Around the same time different scripts were invented in India, Egypt, Mesoamerica and China. As writing developed independently in different places they had different rules, different styles and different characters. Writing was primarily a means of recording language, an important tool of communication, maintaining records and expressing oneself. Different types of early writing was cuneiform of the Sumerians, hieroglyphs of the Egyptians, logographs of the Chinese, Indus script of India, and the Maya script of Mesoamerica. ‎

When I was about four years old, I went to school in a place called Hirakud in Odisha. Hirakud was on the banks of the river Mahanadi and a massive dam was being built over it. My father was one of the Engineers building the dam. There was hardly any educational facility in Hirakud, so there I was going to school where I had to write on a takhti- a wooden board on which one had to put some sort of a white paste, dry it and then write with a khadi. When I was five, I insisted and moved over to St. Joseph's Convent School in Cuttack where I was a boarder and started learning to write on paper with a pencil. As time rolled on, from pencil I graduated to writing with a holder. We had to attach a nib to the holder. There would be an ink bottle on every desk and we had to dip the nib in the bottle, take measured amount of ink very carefully, write on the four lined notebook and then use the blotting paper. One had to be very precise in taking the ink otherwise the ink would spread and spoil our beautiful handwriting. In those days a lot of importance was given to write very neatly with perfect strokes. From the nib holder one graduated to a fountain pen. There was a lot of time spent on this humungous task of filling ink in the fountain pen. We used to have pens, which had space for filling the ink with a dropper. One had to keep a rag close at hand and inspite of careful handling and immense concentration, the fingers would always get stained with the Royal Blue ink. In those days, we used to get ink tablets which had to be dissolved in water or then there were  branded inks which were Sulekha and the more expensive Quink. Later on we got self filling fountain pens which did not have to be opened for filling ink. One just dipped the nib in the ink pot,  pulled a small lever and made sure that the ink was filled.

Let's move on in time to about half a century ago, to be very precise 1964, when I joined College. I was an early entrant to college as I was only fourteen years old when I passed out from Mount Carmel High School located at a small little sleepy town called Hazaribagh in Bihar then and Jharkhand now. The town was quite non descript, but its jail had housed Dr. Rajendra Prasad and Jai Prakash Narain during the Quit India Movement of 1942. Rai Bahadur Jadunath Mukhopadhyay a well known Government Pleader was an early settler here and had amongst his guests Rabindranath Tagore and Subhash Chandra Bose. Hazaribagh was a pretty place, had a cool climate and was close to the Hazaribagh National Park  and most importantly for me, had a lot of educational institutions run by Christians, The Mount Carmel High School for Girls, St. Xavier’s School for boys and St. Columba’s College which was coeducational. When I was studying at Hazaribagh my father was working with National Coal Development Corporation(NCDC) and  was posted at Bhurkunda Colliery and later Barkakana, both small little laid back places with negligible educational facilities.  

After school, I moved to Ranchi Women’s College as by now my father had got transferred to Ranchi. Ranchi was a relatively bigger city located at an altitude of 3000 feet so it made its way into the list of hill stations of India, although it figured only towards the end of the list. Ranchi had a couple of co- educational colleges, Ranchi College as well as St. Xavier’s College, but I joined Ranchi Women’s College. To begin with, I was a day scholar in College as we stayed in the Gandhi Nagar Colony of NCDC. I would take the NCDC bus to college. It was a pleasant journey and my school friend Jayashree Nair would hop onto the bus at Jawahar Nagar Colony also of NCDC.

I had taken Science subjects with Biology, as the aim was for me to become a Doctor. After one year of dissecting frogs, when it was time to dissect cockroaches, I discovered that I was not capable of carrying this any further and told my parents that I would like to pursue further studies in humanities. My mother was highly disappointed but tears and reason prevailed and it was agreed upon that I could take Arts for further studies, so it was Political science (Hon's) and Economics as a side subject. By now daddy had got transferred to an extremely backward place in Bastar called Bailadila. The nearest railway station was at Raipur which was about 374 kms away.

More about Bailadila and Bastar later, in some other post.

I was fifteen and pursuing my Arts degree with a lot of comfort and fun. I joined NCC which was an option which was  given to us. It meant daily march past parade practice during lunch time. I used to love it and come summer, rain or winter I was happily practicing and attending sessions and camps of NCC.

As time went by, my father got transferred to Delhi. During holidays I would have to take a train from Ranchi to Delhi. Those were the days of the steam engines and there were very few trains running across the country. Going from Ranchi one had to take the Patna- Hatia Express which had a specific designated compartment  for Delhi. This compartment would be detached from the Patna- Hatia Express at Patna Junction and would get attached to the train going from Patna to Old Delhi Railway station. 

On these journey's I often met a few other students travelling from Ranchi to Delhi, as near Ranchi there was a prestigious Engineering College, BIT Mesra, which had a number of students from Delhi. Holidays normally happened around the same time. We all travelled without reservation as we could not reserve a berth in the compartment.

On one of these journey's, while travelling from Delhi to Ranchi in March of 1966, I met a person who loved to write letters. He asked my name and the college that I studied in and lo and behold one fine day I got an inland letter  from a person who signed his name as  "Cuckoo". It was quite an innocuous letter, yet evoked much excitement and was much discussed by my friends. They goaded me to reply as they saw no harm in writing a letter. Those were the days when making pen pals was quite a rage. One would write to strangers and become pen pals. It was really very innocent and straight forward fun. Often in magazines for youngsters like the Junior Statesman which later became JS, names and addresses of those interested in making pen pals was published.  

Being in a Women's college hostel was quite akin to being in a sort of Concentration camp. There was a strict monitoring of every activity of the residents and letters were totally censored. The Hostel warden read each and every letter that came in. She would not allow letters from any stranger to reach the recipient. The inland letters that we were allowed to write were  posted in a wooden box kept for the purpose outside the Warden's room. The letter had to be kept open so that the warden could read it before closing the flap and sending it to the post office. So, under the hawk eyes of Parvati amma our Warden, this letter came through and I also replied very cautiously.

Thus started a long innings of letter writing. 

The postal department and Indian Railways played a major role in the story of these two characters who wrote and wrote and wrote. Right from 1966 to 1970.

 

1970

MUCH LATER

 Well so the story of writing letters will continue after a brief pause, first let me get some feed back from you. Do you want to know more?