Slate and Dip Pens
Whilst at school in my first year of school – yes Tamil school Perak Sangeetha Saba, we were given slates with a framed background, a solid substance that you write on with another stylus of the same material. You write with the stylus and rub it off with your hands or piece of cloth. Most of the time you use your hand this being more easy. This slate is a foot length and about 5 inches in breath with a frame like we use for exhibiting photographs in our house. Another unique method was the use of sand to write the alphabets – you spread sand over a small area and then write. I was in the Tamil class for about a year or so, and, don’t know when or what class they allow pencils and exercise books. Googling will show images of the slate.
In my English school, it is pencil first, dip pen and finally fountain pens. What is a dip pen. It is a handle either wood or plastic with a nib and you dip the nib to an ink-bottle. I still remember teachers telling students your nib writing will make you a expert in writing with fountain pens. True? I don’t know. Ball pens came it when I was in Form 2 or 3, sometime early fifties. However careful you are, you will have ink in your uniform when using the dip pen and I suppose you are more studious if your uniform has more ink. Pity the mothers cleaning uniforms.
In my earlier blog I mentioned my father on arriving in Malaya worked in a quarry breaking stones or ballast for the railway tracks. He was not getting enough money and therefore switched over to work in the railways. He started working in the District Engineers workshop and was made a Mason’s assistant, (assistant brick-layer) mason later and in 1961 retired as the chief mason at KTM. During his lifetime as a bachelor, before 1936, he shared a house in my old area Class XI quarters with other members of his clan from India. Three or four shared a house, sharing the expenses and there was communal cooking. One was a cook, one the leader and others to do cleaning and what not. My father was the leader, and if anyone came to Malaya from India – particularly Tirunelvelli, in South India, and was not employed he could share their house and eat as well without paying until such times work was available. My father send money to India, but could not return to India as promised after a short stint in Malaya. Hence in 1936 married my mother from Batu Gajah and I was born in 1938. According to my mother she was married at the age of 12 and bore me when she was 14. Now on ages of my father and mother.
My father was born in India on 1909, and was 17 years old when he arrived in Malaya. He got married in 1936 when he was 27 years old, and died at the ripe old age of 100 years in 2009. His date of birth was obtained from the baptism records of the church in Thengulam South India. He was married 73 years.
No birth certificate, neither any records are available of my mother’s birth. She was born in Thiruvannamalai in South India and arrived in Malaya somewhere in the early 1920s. She died in 2016 when she was 92 years old. Some of these dates don’t match but in remembering or reminiscing one makes mistakes. And, dates on identity cards are not correct when there are no birth-certificates and are dates made verbally basing on the informants memory
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