“The Yellow Pencil” 

 
(​ Fictional Reading - Source: Ar. Naveen Mahantesh) 
7 Min Read 
 
Task: ​Please go over the following and sketch (A4) your own analysis of how the 
perspective of a place might change based on the user. Keep in mind the focus is 
on experience of the place. Analysis is preferred through sketches with minimal 
written content.  
 
Following is a short essay describing the experience of a little girl’s commute on a bus 
through the busy roads of Mumbai.  
 
 
“Alright, what will you be?”, she wondered, looking at the pencil in her hand. She 
had bought a brand new pencil, with a green eraser at one of its ends. “You’ve 
lived a long and hollow life!”, she suddenly muttered, looking at a worn out yellow 
pencil that rested in a porcelain cup on her table. She hadn’t liked that yellow 
pencil. She felt cheated, looking at that pencil. That pencil had hardly written the 
length of the word ‘alphabet’ before succumbing to its first breakdown. She had 
bought that pencil outside the Kurla train station.   

That had been an exciting day for her. She had found a window seat at the front in 
a double Decker bus. And for her joy, it had begun to rain and the bus got stuck 
within a slum of automobiles trying to negotiate within each other's turning radii. 
And, she had the queen’s eye view over the whole fabric of honks, rain and the 
radio that was playing in the bus.   

The radio was playing from one of the pockets in the bus, but she could hardly 
care whose pocket it was. She had found her background score for the carnival in 
front of her. Sitting in her seat on the bus, she imagined rearranging the traffic 
below her. She lifted one auto rickshaw from her left and tried looking for a place 
where it would fit in. As she scanned the windows around her, her eyes gleamed 
to find a small paper recycling shop. She imagined picking up the stacks of 
papers from the shop with her right hand and replaced it with the auto rickshaw. 
And as she looked to place the newspapers in the place of the auto rickshaw, she 
noticed a mechanic’s shop in front of it. “He will end up wiping his hands with the 
newspaper”, she thought, “and, that will be the end of you.” She told the stacks of 
newspapers. Not finding a suitable home for the stacks of newspaper, she 
imagined it being dropped into her pocket. Her pocket was full of such objects 
that stored her nostalgia.   

She had a pocketful of objects that needed rearranging that day, and she 
depended on her yellow pencil for that. She remembered that she was brought 
down to the ground, from the double Decker bus at the Kurla station, where the 
buses would go round the cul-de-sac. She had started walking towards the train 
station, but her eyes were still plugged onto the parade of red buses going 
around the cul-de-sac. The road to this bus station/train station was always in a 
state of contradicting negotiations. Owing to this, “slow” traffic, people would 
start trickling down from the bus, from quite a while back and walk the 
remainder of the distance.   
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Drip by drip the buses would empty out its insides and would exhaust its 
passengers by the time it reached the cul-de-sac. The buses came alive at the 
cul de sac though. They would swing back into life without any brakes, and she 
had loved that moment. People had run out of its way to occupy it eventually. 
The flutter that had created around itself, had reminded her of the next day’s 
ride. And, she had bid farewell to the buses. But, she was still stuck with the rain 
without any complaints. She had opened her green umbrella and had started 
walking past the stalls around. She liked holding the umbrella in her hand, it 
made her feel powerful. She didn’t have to brush shoulders with the crowd, as 
long she was within the radius of her umbrella. The umbrella would take care of 
all the shoulders, arms and heads that she would have had to dodge.   

The stalls were not more than just a table of trinkets that would shine under an 
incandescent bulb, a blue tarpaulin above and someone who would give you his 
time, if you asked for it. And, this is all she had always wanted from the person 
who sold his trinkets. She would take his time around the table, looking at 
everything that shone and wrote in all the colors that were available for her 
imagination. Going around the table, that day, she had found earrings shaped like 
a skull, lipstick that glittered on its surface, some green colored translucent 
erasers and a bunch of yellow pencils. “hah!” her eyes had once again gleamed at 
the pencils, that were bunched up and stocked in a small container that worked 
as a pencil holder. Of all the things on the table that were just lying down and 
apart, these seemed to be the only ones who stuck together and seemed alive. 
They had taken the first step to leave that table, by standing up and raising their 
hands! She grabbed them; four of them, with such intent that the shopkeeper for a 
moment thought that she was shoplifting. She had then stretched her hand out at 
him, showing what she had found and handed him over the money. With a 
triumphant smile on her face, she had set forward towards the train station 
platform to catch her train back home. She had found a new friend, and she had 
already started dreaming about their adventures together.   

On the way, she had seen a person who was selling umbrellas and was 
completely drenched. His hands were filled with umbrellas, but none seemed to 
shelter him. For a fleeting moment, she had stopped in her way to look at his 
situation with horror in her eyes. She could not believe that something that was in 
his hand would betray him in times of need. She wasn’t aware she had stopped 
walking within that moment of betrayal and someone had bumped into her from 
the rear. And, while she was recovering from the bump, someone had bumped 
her from the side. In that confusion, she had dropped those pencils on the ground. 
Two of them had managed to roll away into an abyss of footsteps and one of 
them broke into two under a slimy brown footstep. Her breath shortened for a 
moment while she looked for those pencils, two had rolled away and one had 
broken its back. “Alright, so two of you wanted to run away and one of you wanted 
to be broken into two. Is that why you picked me?”, she thought as she tried 
looking for the fourth one. Her eyes were damp and she felt the pencils had ‘used’ 
her.   

She had gone down to her knees, in between all the footsteps around and was 
straining her eyes to find the fourth pencil. It was dawn and soon getting dark. She 
had to get back home; her dad would be worried if he hadn’t seen her getting out 
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of the station before sun-down.  
 
Her dad had a satellite shop that went around the station and the markets around 
the station. The corners where the autos parked themselves and the parking lots 
were where he made the majority of his business. He would always wait for his 
daughter at the station in the evening. Sometimes, he would receive her at the 
station, and they both would head home together. Other Times, he would just 
make sure that she has come out of the station safely and get back to his work.   

With the slight panic setting in her heart, she strained her eyes with 
determination, looking for her yellow pencil. She wanted to claim her worth by 
finding that pencil. Right then, she was tapped on her left shoulder. With her hair 
and her bag and her umbrella in a mess, she looked up to see someone handing 
her, her pencil. It was the same guy who had sold it to her.   

She grabbed the pencil from his hand, with a slight sense of relief and ran towards 
the station platform. She scrambled her pockets to find her train pass, just in case, 
if someone stopped her at the wrong time. She clambered up the footbridge and 
looked up at the electronic train schedules. She let out a breath; she still had four 
minutes before her train would arrive at the platform. She straightened herself up, 
wrapped her umbrella, put it back in her bag. Clearing her hair off her face, she 
looked at the yellow pencil at hand. She gave it a stare for getting lost, but left the 
rest of her emotions towards the pencil to unfold later. She put the pencil in her 
pocket, along with the stack of newspapers and climbed down to the platform 
from the footbridge.   

- End –   

Content Source: Ar. Naveen Mahantesh 

Prayog - Experiments in teaching and learning (Shivani Seshadri) 

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