Photostat

Photostat

I love writing, and ideas keep popping in my head and I have to note them down. The prompt came when this cartoon, which is actually a self advertisement, grabbed my eye. TOI tells about their truth in prevailing job when they busted a scam of fake COVID negative tests, for the entry to the holiest Kumbh Mela. The right wing will ask ‘Why don’t you go and investigate the religious processions of others. You know which I am talking about!’ The left wing will criticize and blame the right wing Government and their nationalist plus Hindu propaganda. Most people will not care and understand why people used fake tests. And what I think of is how photostat has been the most useful invention ever. This can easily turn into an exposition about the inventor and the evolution of photostat. However this is about a memory from my pensive on photostat. 

I remember how our college resident photostat owner had a business empire of his own. He not only charged 50 paise to exceedingly 1 rs per each. Recently when I visited for my 10th year reunion. It had reached Ris 5 per page. But this was not his money making racket.

You ask any student how people have grown rich exceptionally by running their regular supply of note sets. It’s a phenomenon to measure how in colleges there are always these front benchers who took notes while the rest of the class slept, chatted, checked their phones or threw airplanes. And one smart aleck borrow  

 these notes and get it ‘photostated’ Suddenly the demand for notes will increase and all this borrowing business ends when the smart photostat guy keeps his own stock to sell to the back benchers. 

The completion grows between front benchers to get their notes in circulation, but generally the best notes go around and have their own brand. In our college in with Niyathi Naidu. A 6 feet Telugu girl who was hard working, studios and had a beautiful hand writing. Her notes were Sharp, well written, and even better that the text books. She was engaged to be married to one guy of her parents choice in the first year, but by second year she was engaged to another. Long distance groom from IIMs was a childhood family friend. We girls gushed at their non existent love story. You are at an age when  you want to find romance in everything even in an arrange marriage. We also attended her wedding just a month before end of college. She was the first one getting married and we all had to be there. It was a rich and grand wedding like Bahubali extravaganza. We stayed for 4 days in fully paid hotel as friends of the bride and groom. We partied, saw the city and had some good wedding food and fun. 

She now works as a HR Head of a small company. I wonder how she applied her note taking skills. I can only tell you that she gathered blessings of a life time by supplying her notes to the rest of the class. We owe her our degrees literally and hope her children are well educated. 

P.s. I dedicate this piece of my writing for all those diligent note takers who have taken care of their batches passing grades and of the batches after them. Teachers, faculty and computers don’t matter. What matters are good note takers on which our entire education and exam system is based on.