From DTM to ATM days !

Pocket money was one of my boyhood entitlements that I was heartlessly denied by my father who did not believe in allowing children to even look at money. The one note which floats before my eyes even now is the old ten rupee bill which carried the national emblem of Ashok Pillar lions on one side and the image of a medieval ship on the other. I remember how I used to longingly look at it whenever my father opened his purse, as it lay hugging notes of lesser denomination .

Purses those days were big in size since the currency notes were big. Yesteryear's five rupee note was bigger than today's five hundred rupee note. I had never seen a hundred rupee before I was twenty. Even my father came into possession of a hundred rupee bill once in a blue moon as his salary, then as a school teacher was only two hundred.

While my father never gave me a rupee which I would have been very glad to keep in my shirt pocket, my closest pal R.K. enjoyed abundant pocket money. Only once I came into its possession when I received a money order from a Tamil Weekly as remuneration for a modified cock and bull story I wrote for its children page. I felt like a Prince when the postman gave me a crisp ten rupee note. But the ecstasy did not last long. After allowing me to fondle it for a while my father snatched it from me saying I was not old enough to hold a ‘high’ voltage currency note.

RKs father was the only Prohit available in the neighborhood and he was in great demand. On new moon days (Amavasya) the day people offer water oblations to the departed souls of their forefathers, he returned home with his money pouch overflowing with coins. Prohits those days never had money purses as they were made from leather and they accepted only metal coins. Paper currencies were untouchables. RK used to fill his trouser pocket from his father’s coffer and went around buying kites, tops, even pets.

I had another friend named Babu who used to earn his pocket money in an ingenious manner. He would massage his uncle’s legs daily in the morning when his uncle returned home from night shift duty and lay in his easy chair. Babu was paid at the rate of fifty paisa per hour.

Adaikkappan, a rich classmate of mine from Sri Lanka whose father owned a talcum powder factory used to get a daily pocket money of 10 rupees. His monthly pocket allowance worked out to Rs.300 which was 100 rupees more than what my father received as his monthly salary. This generous boy used to buy us, a group of six students, ice candies and mango slices during lunch intervals.

Decades ago children of orthodox middle class households like ours were strictly kept away from money. Those were the DTM (Don’t Touch Money) days. Now children enjoy ATM days. They have their parent's debit cards and their pins!