The Old Diary and the Old Thoughts!
The old diary was still holding
good. The new diary no one wants to
write, as these are kept off to write the new non-existent programmes date by
date! When they would have lived out the
year concerned, then we feel free to write in them. As in any case, they have lived out their
time! Just as in life. When life is
there we all keep ourselves busy with hundred and one things and seldom find
time to be good to one another and our dear dear ones and parents.
Once life
is about to ebb out we are all free to live a happy life and sadly comes the
revelation that we are about to be no more.
Still, all of us knowing all that still keep busy. Now, this diary of mine has seen ten very
good years and has the handwriting of all of us in the family. All the family mile stones are marked in
it. Like, addresses and phone numbers
of friends and utility companies, children’s marriages, exact address of
relatives who have not been visited for long, mu own emotional outbursts. Also the telephone numbers of some people
whom I felt are useful, numbers of taxi arrangers, cooking gas company to order
for cooking gas at times, etc., etc.
The various hand-writings adorning its pages bring up nostalgia by
themselves.
This hard bound leather jacket is still solidly strong but a
little faded with time. The brown
leather cover has taken a darker hue with time. It was a bright reddish brown
when new but has faded a little. A golden
shank mark on the right top of the cover has also faded, like all gold
ornaments which need a little polishing.
The pages
are lined with regular finely dotted lines reminding me of the old time
childhood transcription copies. Those
copies had four lines, two red lines outside and two green or blue lines
inside. The rules was to write the
cursive English words on the on the blue or green lines with the down tails and
the up swinging part of the letters to touch the bottom and top outside red
lines, respectively. But there were no specific
rules for the length of the lines connecting each letter.
In my little mind I found a way to bypass the monotony and
crass feeling of continuous writing. What I did was to extend the tail of each
letter as far as possible. A word with
four letters in it, I could fill this way.
For example, I wrote the word ‘l o n g’ with the long tails joining the letters.! This way, I could fill a page with a few
words.
Even
though, I wrote and so filled up my page, when the time came for our teacher to
check the books and the books were being taken up one by one, a kind of anxiety
gripped me! I thought the teacher would
look at it, make a long tick in red ink and put it on the other books he has
already checked. I waited with bated
breath to see my teacher to pick up my book…One by one he started to pick up
the books and it went on from time to time up to the sixth. When he picked u the 7th book, the
one with a newspaper cover, it was mine.
He opened it, looked at it, his eyes flowered up a little, he kept it on
the table and slowly surveyed the class from one side to the other. Then his fze came back to me and stopped on
me. He intently looked at me for a
little while and slowly signalled me to come up.
He was sitting on a raised podium and I walked up to him and
climbed on the little stage. He showed
me the page I had filled up with my long long tailed letter words and told me
with a mischievous smile: ”You know how
you wrote it..” He continued “I know
what you would have thought in your little mind. To save time, but it is indented for you to
write as many letters as possible, not as little as possible, ok?” I very obediently said “Yes Sir” and slowly walked down the stage
with the book he had given back to me to write the page all over again!
The saving grace was he did not tell the class what had
happened and it saved me a lot of unwanted queries from my class fellows!
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