Every November 14, we wake up to a wave of nostalgia. Parents posting cute — and often embarrassing — childhood photos on their WhatsApp status, family and friends spamming groups with messages like ‘Happy Children’s Day to the adults who are still kids at heart’, children heading to school without the heavy bags that usually weigh them down, and young adults quietly envying that carefree sight. But nostalgia isn’t reserved only for those who grew up in the ’70s. It hits harder for Millennials, and more so for Gen Z, who’ve only recently transitioned from classroom benches to office desks and college deadlines. They may be digital natives who’ve lived through both the snake game on button phones and the era of Instagram reels, yet, nothing unlocks childhood faster than old-school stationery.

They still act as a magical portal. For many, it opens with the clack of a magnetic flap. The multi-functional pencil box remains the ultimate nostalgia trigger, especially for those who treated it like a prized possession. Joshua V still recalls his with precise clarity: “The dual side stationery box with magnet doors, which had compartments for each item…anyone who had it was considered cool because it had those buttons to open the compartments.” For Sivagami, pencil boxes practically defined childhood status. “Those double-sided magnetic pencil boxes,” she says, instantly transported to “2002 or 2004, to simpler times.” But nothing beat the ones wrapped in pop culture prestige — “the Hannah Montana stationery. Anyone who had that was elite. Supremely elite.”​

But those boxes were not just a mere show-off; for Udhaya M, hers was a vision board in disguise. Her Disney Princess-themed box, with its many compartments and dispensers, felt almost like a “magic box”. One school day, she scribbled the name of a college she dreamt of studying at onto a tiny piece of glitter paper and tucked it inside. Years later, she got admitted into that very institution. “Almost eight years later, on a random working day the memory struck me and the next day I went home and opened the box and that glitter note with my college name was still in it,” she recalls, a quiet reminder that even childhood whims can manifest into fate.

Prized possessions

From these boxes, the memories naturally spill into what they carried — the pens, pencils, sharpeners, and erasers that shaped everyday routines. For Joshua, stationery always arrived with both excitement and responsibility. “I always felt that I shouldn’t lose it. I’d hardly use them because what if the ink runs out or it breaks?” he says, remembering his most treasured item: the multi-ink click pen that felt futuristic for its time. Sivagami’s prized possession came from abroad — a colouring kit that helped her move onto a “cool ladder” among her area friends. “There was a specific magic crayon that could be used to erase the colours on that sheet and recolour it,” she says about a feature so unbelievable that no one at school believed it existed.

While Sivagami’s nostalgia revolves around novelty, Aadarsh Ramakrishna’s memories are rooted in simplicity. “Pencil…it just feels like the beginning of educational life,” he says. But the transition from pencil to pen when you move to middle school is a rite of passage and a moment that quietly announces you’re growing up. When that moment arrived, Aadarsh’s simplicity didn’t diminish his affection for certain pens, especially the V7 Pilot, which he still calls “just the absolute best.” Yet for him, nothing matched the pride of finally owning a Parker.

Sensory experience

Some memory awakens through smell before sight. Glory Juliet M is instantly transported by fragrances from the past. “The smell pens… I used them to work out math sums,” she says. Her purple sharpener with a waste-collecting cup stayed with her for five years, a small but steadfast companion. And her excitement for stationery never faded: “Even as an adult, I get way too much excited on seeing/getting a stationery item…it still feels the same.”

Sensory-based nostalgia runs deep across their stories. Joshua remembers fruit-shaped scented erasers; Sivagami recalls, “The smell of Nataraj pencil, especially the smell that comes as we sharpen it, and the smell of ink bottles. The smell of flavoured erasers reminds me of how someone in class first brought it and made us all smell it. We were super fascinated.” Glory brings up Flora pencils with pink erasers that smelled slightly floral and kept her sniffing them on loop. And some memories live not in what they had, but in what they desperately wanted, like Sivagami’s unreachable dream: the fabled Jee Boom Ba, aka Shakalaka Boom Boom pencil. “I would dream of owning that pencil, drawing out a puppy and the puppy coming to life,” she laughs, still amused by how deeply she believed in its magic.

As these memories unfold, it becomes clear that stationery wasn’t just about writing — it was about imagination. Joshua remembers glitter pens inspiring him to create an artwork made entirely of sparkles. For Aadarsh, writing implements defined the worlds he built in his mind. A Parker pen made him feel like “the king of a kingdom,” while a V7 Pilot made him feel like “the best performer.” That confidence, he says, unlocked stories that flowed without resistance: “Pride is what led to imagination.” Sivagami echoes this sentiment saying she believed stationery could “help us fly, bring anything to life, erase off anything,” influenced by magic crayons and early-2000s TV fantasy.

For Udhaya, creativity was tied to cute functional pieces: colourful sticky notes, tiny staplers, tiny notebooks. Their charm made homework exciting. The same instinct later evolved into her creating vision boards as an adult, still using stationery as a tool to imagine her future.

And just like the stationery itself, the bags that carried them hold their own nostalgic weight. For Sivagami, it was the classic horizontal school bags with metallic locks. Joshua, meanwhile, can never forget his trolley-wheeled bag from 2002. “My 30+-year-old friends still remember that bag and bring it up in conversations,” he laughs.

In the end, these memories — of scented erasers, glitter pens, multiple-button pencil boxes, and school bags that rolled or clicked — remind us that childhood isn’t defined by age, but by the small things that shaped us. On a day that celebrates the child in every adult, these stories prove that a simple stationery item can still reopen an entire world. And perhaps that’s the real magic of growing up: realising that some parts of us never did.

(Written by Rakshita Priya G of The New Indian Express)