Almost midnight now, and I got home an hour ago after a long day at work, nervous about the task that awaited me — to think of a subject for this week’s column and, having thought of a subject, to write it.
Fortunately, something else awaited me as well: a brown leather-bound Markings notebook, sent by a friend who very thoughtfully bought it for me during her recent visit to the U.S. The sight and touch of the new notebook revitalised me, just as a new toy would jerk a sleepy child into action. My love for fresh notebooks, like many of you, dates back to childhood — one could hate textbooks, but never notebooks.
I even remember envying my classmates from Bihar who would return to Kanpur from their summer vacations armed with a year’s stock of Vaishali brand of notebooks, manufactured and sold at a nominal price by the Bihar Government. Even though they cost a pittance, they, with their tempting off-white pages, were far superior to the exercise books the rest of us used. I really wished I was a Bihari.
Fortunately, I chose a profession where I continued to need notebooks even after leaving the classroom. Today, my very existence depends on the notebook. I need to carry one all the time for self-preservation, just like many carry a gun for self-protection: losing the notebook can be as catastrophic as the gun slipping out of one’s waist and falling into wrong hands.
The plus side is that you always look forward to shopping for notebooks. They make for a satisfying purchase because you know they are going to be your truest companion, recording nothing but the truth. During a visit to Australia in late 2014, I bought from a Sydney bookshop two made-in-France Clairefontaine notebooks (the wrapper said, ‘ Life unplugged: Takes you where no laptop can go’ ) for 13 Australian dollars each. Subsequently, from a quaint bookshop in the quaint town of Bowral, where Sir Donald Bradman blossomed as a cricketer, I bought two more notebooks, for 20 dollars each. I felt rich.
This was not the first time I spent a lot of money on notebooks. Since Bruce Chatwin famously used Moleskine to record his travels, I too have spent a fortune, over the years, buying Moleskine notebooks. But its pages bleed and the elastic band hangs loose after a few months of use. My Moleskine, unlike Chatwin’s Moleskine, was made in China. I then began using India-made Rubberband notebooks before they too became too expensive. Of late, I use Paperclip products: not very cheap, not very expensive either, but very classy. It is no longer about the brand of notebook you choose to use, but the brands that are available at your disposal.
In the digital age, the word ‘notebook’ has come to mean something else: when you type it out in the search box of, say, amazon.com, you get to see the latest laptops. But refine the search by going to the stationery category and you will be spoilt for choice. While only about half-a-dozen companies make digital notebooks, the number of those making real notebooks runs into dozens — and there must be a reason why. The reason, I think, is that putting pen to paper remains an intimate activity, which comes naturally to us, just like brushing our teeth — not to be easily done away by technology.
(The writer is an Associate Editor with The Hindu)
