Memories Not Erased
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A recent exchange with a classmate took me swiftly back to the heady days of late-70s IIT KGP, when bell-bottoms roamed free, the sideburns were thick and long, where scraggly mustaches were sported with pride, and the shirt collars resembled floppy beagle ears. The greasy smell of fresh samosas shingaras & vegetable chops chaaps hung thick over Tech Market. The two ME classmates, myself and AT, had lived parallel lives, were now united by the shared struggle of Lab reports, ET Tutorials, slinging those 20-lb sledgehammers in Forging workshop, the endless home-works, etc. Filling those brown PT files with acceptable 3B (Blah Blah Blah) stretching over multiple PT sheets was the goal. The eternal paper chase was familiar from early childhood to both of us, and with that, the unending hunt for the right stationery that didn't make ink-stains spread, nor cause perforations instead of punctuations from sharp pencils and nibs, the main weapons of our generation prior to the arrival of ball-point pens. I recall the grave and disapproving look from my teacher, Sri H.N. (Aichan) Singh bemoaning about how it would ruin our penmamship. Content quality took apparently a secondary spot for him, content quantity and appearance were primary and paramount.
AT, a bona fide campus kid, knew KGP like the handlebars of his new Hercules. From the faculty quarters, he had the sort of insider knowledge that made him the de facto guru to all things Tech Market. He had grown up on Thackers. The legendary shack, part shop, part archaeological dig, stacked to the ceiling and lit by a flickering tubelight, had been his go-to since childhood. It stocked everything from books to PT files to notebooks, even those mysterious grey market, "Parker" jotter refills that leaked with a sense of purpose. Mr. Thacker knew their family well. They were steady customers and accorded due courtesy, unlike the curt nods to any on-campus students visiting his store.
I hailed from a distant town where Kailash Stores reigned supreme, a magical establishment that sold dreams. The owner, Mr. Sharma Sr. always greeted my father warmly and personally attended to us during our visits, leaving other customers to his son, literally Sharmaji ka beta, and the other staff. Besides the textbooks and other school supplies of minor importance, my most coveted possessions in those early years were a Koh-i-Noor pencil, a shiny Camlin geometry box, and the stuff of legends: a fragrant green'n'white eraser with a cartoon character.
It wasn’t just any eraser. It was The Eraser. It smelled heavenly. A treasure that evoked raw envious looks from other kids during those salad days. Like from Samir "Scooter" Singh, the bounder. The rotter was fast and agile on the football field, hence the moniker Scooter or SS. The utter cad. Yes, most likely, you also an SS character menacing your life on and off the football field, arch-nemesis since Grade 4, LLB, the Lord of the Last Bench.
AT had paid a visit to KGP in Dec 2013. Thackers, in a testament to its location and longevity, were still there! Same shack, same location, same size, same layers of dust. Tech Market always had a chaotic village sabji mandi feel, with those little tin-roofed shacks. Apparently, it still retained that post-apocalyptic rustic charm in 2013. Like every shop was built using leftover workshop scraps from the Institute. Thackers looked untouched since ’60s. Same faded "CAMLIN" poster. Even the cobwebs seemed original. Plus รงa change, plus c’est la mรชme chose. With all the e-books and online material, they probably didn’t sell half the stuff they used to. But both the store and the Tech Market seem to continue to survive.
I only ever went to Thackers in full-blown panic mode, adrenaline pumping, pedaling his rattling chariot, a Rayleigh. For those "Oh, $hit, is it due tomorrow?!" assignments needing PT file fillers, graph papers, and those oversized, infernal large white sheets needed during those 5 long semesters of ME Drawing misery. Oh man, those sheets! Never once did any of them roll up properly. You’d put rubber bands around them, secure them, and the dang sheets would wiggle free and spill out of your shoulder bag, taking the ungainly T-square along as you were merrily tooling down on Scholars Ave, halfway to the Institute. Sigh.
Back home for me, Kailash Stores was THE store. It had everything. My entire early academic career could have been sponsored by them. Oh, the joy of buying that one new Koh-i-Noor pencil, and, mmmm, yes… that eraser.
It had a two-tone look, green at one end, white at the other, and the feel of opulence. Scented. Pure luxury. Until SS stole it. I fumed and burned at the devastating loss. But Sr Carmella wouldn't entertain any complaints just with circumstantial evidence. Gut-feelings and anecdotes of SS's prior perfidy and assorted villainous behavior weren't enough. A stolen eraser and a lifetime of trauma. Some wounds never heal.
Those were the Glory Days of Analog Survival. AT swore by Thackers. I romanticized Kailash Stores. Both AT and myself, I suspect, knew well the feeling of sheepishly following out fathers to these stationery stores, him muttering some dire admonition barely suppressed, five minutes before it closed, desperate for that single last-minute item that could prevent academic annihilation.
And somehow, mysteriously, Thackers / Kailash Stores always had that one item in stock. Usually hidden under a decade-old invoice pad and a dusty bottle of glue, Mr. Thacker / Mr. Sharma managed to hunt it down and brandish it with a dramatic flourish of a magician.
On AT's last visit, he stood fascinated by the seeming permanence of Thackers. Same chipped faux wooden counter. Same sleepy setting, perhaps with Thacker Jr. in-charge. Same ghost of a stapler sitting proudly in the glass case like a museum artifact.
An acquaintance wrote back recently that Kailash Stores is still in existence, too. But now they sell selfie sticks and phone covers also. Childhood’s officially over, man.
Fifty years later, those ME drawings, the hatches of Sections, and 3rd angle projections of weird 3D industrial shapes have blurred. The dusty piles of PT files with the yellowed, crumbling PT sheets have long been discarded. But in the corners of their minds, both of us still carry the heady scent of new books, notebooks & other supplies at Thackers / Kailash Stores... and of that one unfair eraser heist that shaped someone's lifetime. Five decades later, I can't look at a scented eraser without muttering, “Bloody SS…”
Scenes of life lived long ago now bubble up infrequently, scripted by shared laughter and formed over collective trauma. A few memories surface unexpectedly from casual text exchanges between classmates, one a native Kgpian & an adoptive Nehruite, the other a native Nehruite & an adoptive Kgpian, over the bittersweet recollections of the special ambiance of special bookstore treasure troves and... the sweet, fresh fragrance of that special eraser still vivid amidst the rapidly dimming fog of fading memories.
