The brown-paper covered book
I don’t know if this is specific to India or my childhood. At the start of every new school year, one of the ritual involves parents visiting the ‘authorised book shop’ which may be in the school or in another neighbourhood, ticking off text books form the list provided by the class teacher, selecting an appropriate number of empty notebooks of some specified size and then buying a roll of brown paper. Now I’m guessing the more modern, international schools may not follow this ritual. But I'm certain that across the country, thousands of little children are cutting brown paper into rectangular shapes and putting a ‘jilat’ or a cover on the notebooks to prevent wear and tear over a new term. I have memories of sitting down with my parents on the weekend before the start of a new term with paper, glue, tape and those all-important ‘name stickers’. They came in lots of bright colours with animals, flowers and cartoons as the background. You had to write your ‘FULL NAME’, ‘STAN...