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The Rainbow Rubber
Twenty five years ago, when my daughter wasseven and my son three , I bought on a tripabroad two erasers, one for each .Brilliant white,and square, these had painted on the surface , a perfect rainbow . Instantly christened asRainbow Rubbers, these were allotted slots of  prestige in the respective pencil boxes. A month later in the evening at home , around seven ,the homework hour ,there was bedlam .Tears were gushing all over, and after thirty minutes of aimless and confused coaxing, clarity shimmered into view. The rainbow rubber inyounger one’s pencil box had disappeared. Thetragedy was deeper , because the rubber was sospecial that it had yet to be used. According tothe elder sister, it was totally the young fellow’sfault; he had showed it off too much. Noinvestigation or search could now succeed , not because there was no suspect, but because all inthe class were suspect.Over the next week, several ideas emerged for arubber sharing arrangement. Prominent amongthese were proposals that each take therubber on alternate days(rejected because classhours were of unequal length for them ),that the
 
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rubber be bisected by an impartial hand (turned down because the part of the rainbow in eachwould not be identical),that the rubber be placed in safe custody and taken only on class test days as a talisman(accepted but rejected oncethe test days were found to overlap).Then, all of a sudden, the rainbow rubber appeared forgotten. I wondered why, but dared not ask .Last month , after my retirement , as Irummaged the boxes in the garage, my eye fell on a familiar pencil box , fading blue but withthe owner’s name still very visible. Within it,among the lucky pencil bits, the crooked compass and the cracked plastic protractor, lay the Rainbow Rubber, still incandescently white,unused.That night, during the routine telephone call from the neurologist in Oxford and the owner of the pencil box, I asked why the rubber had not been used. “Oh daddy“, came the answer, “it’s part of prehistory”. “I wanted him to have it but he did not want to take mine and use it. So weboth decided to forget it and leave it in the old  pencil box after mamma got us each a new perfumed rubber and new pencil boxes fromBurma Bazaar..”
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