The BOX of love

Suddenly flash backed the old times. People around me are wondering what to buy their cousins and brother's and girl friend's brothers and nephew's aunts. The probable list reads something like - Playstations, a high tech watch, DVD players and even a laptop. I was once small too (according to some people I haven't changed that much even now) and remember that when I was a kid one of my biggest attractions was the PENCIL BOX.

Remember them? People from my generation (24-30) will surely know what I'm talking abt. when we were young, pencil boxes used to be a major status statement in school. The most eye candy ones were the phone-shaped kinds. The stupid me used to think that owning one such thing would make people assume that I carried an actual phone. I even re'call' making a few fictional calls using my 3*8 delight. A close competitor of the "phone" was the "calculator". Equally big, equally fake and equally enthralling and convincing to the little mind. I remember that a plastic layer inside these boxes separated the pencils from the sharpeners and erasers. Peek inside along the edges, and you could surely spot some pencil leftovers. "How many times have I told you not to chew the rubber?" Mum would ask sternly. "How many times have I reminded you to sharpen your pencil next to the bin and not inside the box. The next time you do that I'll give you one of those cloth cases with a zipper running through it," she would threaten, reminding me of the classist hierarchy of pencildom.

Soon my mom elevated me to a new level of showmanship. The telephone was replaced by what was the "In Thing" then - double decker pencil boxes - the two storeyed spectacle. The box had two separate boxes placed on top of each other. The top had a cushiony feel and the coolest thing abt this masterpiece was a magnetic lock that the makers had introduced. "Do not mix up the color pencils with the writing pencils," mum would instruct tirelessly. I don't think she ever expected me to listen and I don't think I ever did. "And don't play with the magnet. You'll spoil it then."

Years passed and trends changed. I remember having a transparent pencil case, a three storeyed one, one shaped like a car and my personal favorite - a little unassuming box with a zillion trap doors; each popping out some new feature of the box - an eraser holder, an in-built sharpener, a pen stand etc. etc. etc.

What happened to that boy and his little desires???