You can find moments in your past that shape our vision. Dealing with my childhood photo albums, I catch a peek at Anna in early grades, a quiet girl who, if she remained as alive, doesn’t discover how even just in grade 4, she was pointing the way to freedom of expression. There is a lesson here which will come in handy for parents and grandparents.


I have often wondered if Anna’s life may have taken a different turn had she lived her early grades within the sixties in the event the ballpoint pen, replacing the fountain pen, dispensed by using ink blotters in class. Kids of the fifties, we learnt writing hard way–with steel-nibbed pens which we dipped in ink pots and which invariably turned the writing experience right into a mud-bath. It took us months to master ale compromise: speed meant accidental globs and splotches; in the event you wanted to avoid wasting time, selecting far wiser to experience the tortoise.

But Anna was not turtle. Her mind moved quicker than light; she was figuring a method to Bali whenever we remained as stuck within the grade 3 reader; within the fourth grade, when individuals with older siblings counseled me agog over Elvis, she could find anything passionate than Japanese prints.

I recall Sister Mary Michael, the composition teacher in grade 4, who told us that writing was an act of God and that the real writer would find his share of godliness within the holy trinity of pen, paper and blotter. From the three, the blotter was the most indispensable. “Why?” we asked. “Good writing is dependent upon how we control a lot of it.” There were anything more that needed to be controlled also, based on Sister Mary Michael. Reading Anna’s essay on why she liked chocolates, Sister became very still and angular. She peered down at the child, her eyes blue and hard above her spectacles. “Too many adjectives,” she snapped. “Too many words!”

When Anna looked at her, unmoved, Sister retrieved her pen. The nib drew a quick, thin line over Anna’s script; the blotter followed; there came more red lines, more words slashed away.

I watched Anna after she returned to her desk. She began writing, dabbing the blotter after her pen in true Sister Mary Michael fashion. For some time, it seemed like Anna had learnt her lesson. When I peered more closely over her shoulder, I pointed out that it had been the blotter which was absorbing her interest. She’d dribbled a spot on top right-hand corner from the sheet; she stuck the nib down the middle of the area and watched the darkness grow; a couple of details with the nib as well as the blotch has been a bit of chocolate, its center dissolving right into a hole. Fascinated, I watched her work more blotches around the absorbent paper and more dabs before entire blotter changed into a kind of chocolate swiss-cheese.

Beyond her desk came more blotter sheets. Instead of holes, she made lines this time, dark molasses lines dribbled and dripped almost spider fashion from one corner to another location; she paused just for a specified duration to thicken the center stretch without having to break the flow before entire sheet became criss-crossed with tubes of varying lengths and widths as well as the blotter sat on her behalf desk just like a chocolate web.

It had been a young type of Acid Art, so distinctive it made hair ascend to end. But Sister Mary Michael could not quite notice that.
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