Seals

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We now have an internationally accepted symbol for our Rupee like $ for the US:




The other day I read that a new series of currency notes incorporating this symbol will be out, with the signature of our own Subba Rao (Subbu for Dharam Vir), Governor of the Reserve Bank of India, who will say: "I promise to pay the bearer..." under the seal of the RBI:





I am sure he, his extended family, sons, daughters, in-laws and grandkids would hoard as many notes as they can afford and preserve them for posterity as mementos. It sure is a rare honor. I can only hope that 'promises' of a KGPian will hold water forever.

There is a Thurber story where a performing seal from Alaska got excited when she heard that the United States of America chose her as the Great Seal of the USA:






http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Seal_of_the_United_States

Unfortunately it turned out to be a bald eagle that won the race.

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Ever since my childhood this confusion between the two 'seals' held sway on me.

When my Father was promoted as Head Master, the first thing he did was to order a seal to be made with his short signature 'grk' in his own facsimile handwriting on a brass circular ring at the end of a heavy brass handle (brass was cheap then).

Those days answer scripts of the Board Exams were not evaluated within the same school but sent to some other school secretly to avoid what were termed 'malpractices'...of course nothing is ever secret in this world. So, after the exam, the scripts were collected and bundled (sometimes with false-scripting) and enclosed in a specially stitched bag made of coarse cloth (kora) and sewed by hand with a twine thread passing through the devil of a needle. Then Father would take a sealing wax stick (red in color), light a candle, melt the end of the seal stick turning it slowly so that the molten wax falls on the seams of the stitched cloth...and then ask me to firmly emboss his signature on the molten wax by pressing the brass ring onto it...it sure got hot enough for me to run away.

The idea I am told was that once the wax dries, it is impossible for anyone to open the bundle without breaking the seal; and none could re-seal it, since they don't have my Father's signature-brass stick: the seal. The whole thing appeared to me to be an elaborate hoax, since I guessed that "nothing is fool-proof for a sufficiently talented fool", a maxim I came across later on.

By and by Father's brass seal became useless, probably because molten wax seeped deep into the grooves of his signature and the seal became as flat as my brain. Then my Father would take a piece of chalk, wet one end of it, write: "G" on its flat surface with a pin, allow it to dry and use it as a poor substitute for brass...the good thing about it is that it costs next to nothing and can be recycled.

Finally there came a day when the quality of chalks became so poor that they dissolve in water and can't be wetted. Then an ingenious idea came up: use a 4-anna coin as a seal..the idea is that no two 4-anna coins have the same 'thumb impression'...each of them would have worn out differently...crazy...

The next time I had to face sealing waxes was at IIT KGP. I had to send several documents like birth certificates, degrees, marks sheets and hundred rupee notes by post. The only safe method was to send them by Registered Insured Post. But that required I had to seal the envelope enclosing them by sealing wax...no need of brass sticks, chalks, coins etc...just sealing wax would do. But by then the quality of the wax sticks got so poor that the clerk behind the counter would take my fond envelope in his hand, turn it, twist it, screw it and fold it till the seal breaks into a hundred grains...and hand it back to me triumphantly to redo it...his moment of glory.

My Guru SDM had it worse...he wouldn't trust any clerk in the Phy Dept with envelopes enclosing his 'manuscripts' but seal them himself. And he discovered that there is in the Gole Bazaar a single Marwari Shop selling circular flakes of a nasty black wax called: Chach Gola, which even the most truculent postal clerk can't break without hurting his fingers. So, he would order me to fetch a couple of dozen chach gola flakes every other quarter. But of course he would 'reimburse' its cost...about one rupee...a hefty price then for anything...a kilo of rice cost just four rupees.

What do you get for a rupee now, Subbu?


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