Awesome Indian things # 5 : Autograph book

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In the 90's, high schools in India never had any 'graduation' ceremonies. Well, we did, sort of. Only we called them 'farewells'. And we didn't have yearbooks.

And so, one exciting thing about the days leading to the farewell was something we humbly called "Autograph book" (although I can't claim this to be an Indian thing, it surely was one of the highlights of high school farewells in India.) 

This springs back memories of every kind. What made this entire affair so exciting was - "What is that special guy/girl going to write about you?". As was the concept, we maintained a different autograph book for the faculty - the most boring, plain looking and serious autograph book would be promptly picked from Hallmark. The jazzy and style statement autograph book was bought to pass around friends.

And thereby the least controversial and at the same time, most cliched line of the millennium was born.

"Be yourself" - this line was scrolled all over each other's autograph book. Till this date, I believe that 90% of us who scrolled that line, didn't really mean it because we didn't really understand it (we didn't care. If we had to write a line for someone we didn't particularly care about, we would scribble "Be Yourself". Whatever that was supposed to mean, huh?

Some of them were outright shabby. They would write a word and then scratch it to death (so I couldn't read what was written! Mystery eh?). This pissed me off because here was a beautiful and colorful looking book and some was shitting all over it.

Some of them thought took pride in leaving a few pages and then writing somewhere in middle of the book. Seriously? You think I am going to search all over the book just to see where you might have written your precious pearls of wisdom and sweet nothings for me? Get a life dude.

And from the person who meant the most to you (i.e. in your fantasy world. why else would you be excited about a damn rambling on a book?), there would be cryptic statements. Something of the sort - "You are special". And you could run your imaginations wild with it. (Remember, you and him/her are in a fantasy world? Anything is possible here. No boundaries on imagination.) And then we could dish out our own interpretation with our friends. "He wrote to me! He wrote he loves me! He said I was beautiful and he is smitten by me" (See how the statement was interpreted. No mention of the "you are special" part. It morphs into beautiful, sexy, attractive, gorgeous, I love you)

Of course, there also had to be an equally unexciting dreary world of teachers' autograph book. Full of life lessons (which they never taught in class but rushed to write in my autograph book instead) - "You must persevere", "Achieve great heights and work hard", "Make your parents and teachers proud"

See where that was going? And as if this wasn't enough I had lots of God's messages scrolled over my book (I studied in a convent). 

"God will show you the path." "God bless you and your life." "God will guide you to your goal."

Sigh. The point being, too much of that stuff just had an opposite effect on us. Heck, no one really even bothered reading through the book (unless one of us had a crush on the teacher, which I unfortunately never experienced. Never mind that.)

I wish I had a favorite in them (at least I don't remember. It was decades ago!). I wish I could actually run into one of those things and see what sort of nonsensical stuff my school friends had written then. It would be amazing to scan them and put them up on this blog. Like anonymous autographs from the 90's ha!

Where did all that naive love go to? Bring back the autograph books!