I sharpened a pencil.

I started sketching again, true to the promise I had made to myself a few days back. It feels good - the feel of the rough drawing paper, the scratchety-scratch of the pencils on the paper, and the resulting picture - not a work of art, but good enough.

Apart from the many pleasant hours spent in rediscovering this hobby, sketching brought me another unexpected bonus.

One of my pencils needed sharpening, and so I took out my brand new sharpener, and set about sharpening the pencil. A few turns, and the sight of the pencil shavings and lead powder on the sharpener - it was enough to transport me straight back in time to my school days.

I was again a little girl, dressed in the school uniform - a brown pinafore, that unique brown which has no name, and the light brown checked shirt. Black shoes and white socks. Two little hairclips trying unsuccessfully to hold back my thick unruly hair. Sharpening my pencil urgently before the teacher came in, as I had forgotten to sharpen them the previous night. Quickly dumping the pencil shavings in a corner of the drawer, for disposal after class. The drawer, underneath the brown desk - the drawer where I kept my pencilbox.

Pencilboxes. The red Hello Kitty pencilbox which my father had brought from one of his official tours abroad. A prized possession. Then later, a green Mickey Mouse pencil box, which a much admired teacher had presented to a select few of us, for doing well in class. Before that, the magnetic pencilbox - the magnet of which I ruined by dropping the box too many times.

I remembered my bench-mate. Glancing surreptitiously to see if her pencils were sharper than mine. If her book was neater than mine. Drawing a line on the bench to mark boundaries to separate out places, when I was made to sit next to a particularly disliked person.

I remembered my bag, a green, roomy one with pouches where I kept little treasures - a perfumed eraser which couldn't be used because it left black marks on the paper, a little paper with a drawing, a dry leaf - and then the main space in the bag - where the books were neatly arranged, in height order, or in the order of the classes of the day, depending on what order was in vogue in class that week.

I even remembered my lunch bag. An orange bag with a steel triple-decker tiffin box. One box containing chapatis, another containing a delicious kind of curry (each day a different one - my mom is a wizard at that), and the third box containing curds spiced with salt and jeera powder, or chopped bananas in milk and sugar. A prized Milton water bottle that I had won in a Milton "suggest a name" contest. A napkin neatly folded and placed at one side.

I remembered the lunch breaks, where only my best friends got to taste the scrumptious Shruthi's-mother's-curry-of-the-day. Eating up lunch and running out to play for a while before the bell rang. Popping in quickly into my sister's classroom to act the big sister and see if my little sister P was being good and was eating her food, and was not distributing it among everybody, as she so frequently seemed to do.

I remembered my teachers, my classmates, the classes, the notebooks, the text books, the maps on the walls of the classroom, the posters we had made displayed prominently on the boards, the list of homework in our homework diary.

I remembered all this - and much more. Just because I sharpened a pencil.