க‌ரிக்கோல்

Pencil plays an important role in any common man’s life.

Generally in our office meeting rooms, pencils and spare note pads will be available for immediate use. I don’t know why they are keeping pencil and not pens? Around everyone’s table you can find one or 2 pencils lying apart from pen in the pocket.

I started using pencil when I joined 3rd standard (used only Slate and ப‌ல‌ப்ப‌ம் in class I & 2) and continued it for full time usage till class 5. Only in class 6, I started using a pen. It was a long time wish to switch over from pencil. It was told that during early days, one has to use only pencil to write to have good & nice hand writing (Is my handwriting is good ?). Based on this practice only anyone can improve their writing style using pen.

There were hard time, I faced, to sharpen my pencil. I don’t know to use a blade and totally depended on my parent to get it done. In those days sharpeners were not available and it came to normal people’s hand only when I was studying 8th or 9th.

Many times the lead of the pencil will break and we used to have spare pencils to tackle such situations. As a small boy I lost many pencil and because of this, I used to get only half pencil to take it to school.

During examination time, I asked my parent to sharpen my pencil on both sides so that I will have double standby !!

If the pencil becomes too short to hold, we will not leave it and will be used in Geometry box. If we found difficult to fix this small pencil, a paper role will be made and pencil will be inserted from one side and this paper role will be used as dummy extension of pencil. What a creative ideas we had at that time itself !!

Initially we were using only 2 colours other than black pencil. They were Red and Blue. I remember a big single pencil having one side red lead and other side Blue lead was given to me to colour. Later-on more colour pencils were introduced (cryon etc). Now-a-days if you purchase a box of pencil, you will get one sharpener and one eraser free !!

We used to engrave our initial on the side of the pencil using a blade as a safety measure.

Taste of pencil will be liked by many students and always they will taste the back side of the pencil.

My senior school friends told me to experiment to make “Rubber” out of woods that come out at the time of sharpening. Simple method -- Boil water with this wood, add a little milk, cool it for a day to get good quality of rubber !! I sincerely tried but …?