Spring loaded.

I lived my childhood with spring loaded or clockwork toys for company. Toys for boys. An Egyptian mummy, too. http://popgoestheslop.blogspot.com/2006/06/toys-for-boys-egyptian-mummy-too.html told a part of the story. The other day, though, while buying toys for Armaan and Anika, I suddenly but distinctly remembered the long forgotten tactile pleasure of winding spring loaded toys. It was almost as if the power to animate them and make them do stuff was in your hand that magic moment. Battery-powered toys don’t give you that feeling, do they? They run of their own volition almost, in utter disregard of the child. No fun there. And as the batteries run down, the toys too start slowing down as if old age is catching up with them. That kind of thing did not happen to their spring loaded elder cousins I played with. Their nemesis was rust. And, the perverse urge that hit me on rare occasions to turn the key counter clockwise. Speaking of keys, they came in two types: the detachable ones and the other kind. Of the two, the first type was apt to get mislaid. I remember the bouts of frustration I used to be prone to on account of so many lost keys. Sometimes, though, the toymakers out of compassion used to pack keys in pair. Else, you were at the mercy of the toy shop owner who just might condescend to sell you a spare key from his precious cache.

Toys for boys. An Egyptian mummy, too.

A favourite childhood toy I remember vividly was a chutney green road roller cast out of metal. It had a tall chimney. It was powered by a spring-loaded clockwork wind-up engine. You could remove the key before you put it down to do its backward and forward road rolling routine. I have a feeling I had persuaded my father to buy it for me from the famous Lucky Toy Mart at Crawford Market. I also used to play with a clockwork train set - green as well - pulled by a 'coal-fired' replica engine and railroad sections, straight as well as curved. I had managed to acquire from I don't remember where quite a few more such sections. I used to set up an entire journey track with a gradient and a bridge using bits and pieces of other toys like wooden house building sections. No readymade layout for me like the one I see Armaan and Anika playing with! My Meccano set, a modest No. 2 or No. 3, had been purchased from Whiteway Laidlaw, the pucca Brit department store near Flora Fountain. (Its premises were later taken over by the Khadi & Gramodyog Commission and now houses the Khadi Bhandar.) I used to make windmills and other movable toys with my Meccano set and run them with a miniature battery-powered motor they used to sell at the time. I also had a pink coloured nicely sculpted wooden street lamp with a tiny bulb. I remember using a flat Everready battery to light it up. It was a regular part of my improvised railroad layout. Once, during a Navi Wadi jatra (fair) for our family deity, Maheshwari, I bought myself a plastic 'coffin' with a plastic Egyptian 'mummy' lying flat in it. So tiny was this toy that I could easily hold it in my childish palm. In the coffin's false bottom was hidden a magnet - as also inside the mummy. When you gave the coffin a nudge, the magnet would shift causing the mummy to rise. It was applied magnetism and polarity at their best. I thought it was powerful magic, though, and paid the toy seller ten rupees instead of the real price of five rupees for it. (In short, I did not haggle.) When the truth was out, one of my cousins accompanied me to the toy shop the very next day and managed to get back the extra five rupees with a combination of cajoling and mild threats. I watched this drama with a red face standing far from centre stage and thinking the fuss was uncalled for. Powerful magic was supposed to be worth a lot, wasn't it?