It may be time to bring back the wall calendar!

What brings a baboon bone — a fibula, to be precise — to mind at the end of the year? The Ishango Bone is a 20,000-year-old reminder that since the beginning man has been marking time. Discovered in 1960 in Belgian Congo, it’s a bone marked with notches — their exact purpose is still unknown, but it’s certain they were used to measure time, possibly by the moon or some other celestial body.

It is probably the world’s oldest calendar.

On bark and bone, walls and stone, on cloth and paper, by the moon and the sun, by sowing and reaping and now, in that ephemeral thing we call digital space, we humans have marked and measured time. Life is inconceivable without it. Without a calendar planner to carve and break up time into smaller bits, life would be a series of endless events without coherence or significance.

At this time, a New Year’s start by the Gregorian calendar, most of us — no matter who we are or what we do — take stock. Whether it’s been an annus horribilis or a great year, there is that notion that time has passed by and something new lies in wait.

But as time slipped by, the way we mark it has also changed. It used to be that at this time of the year, we put the past behind us and brought in the future — with calendars. A flip, an unfurling of rolled-up sheets, and a new calendar would be on the wall, heralding the start of a new year.

This is how calendars came to us. If you went to a store sometime in late November/December, and you were a regular, the storekeeper would give a big smile and swiftly whip out from under the counter a paper roll held in place with a rubber band, and hand it with a flourish with both hands, saying “Happy New Year!”. It was a new calendar. His way of saying: “Thanks for shopping with us!”

From the smallest kirana store to the biggest companies, nearly every business put out one. A simple but endearing public relations exercise, offered and received warmly. Not all calendars were created equal. The most basic ones had large numbers printed on a grid in simple type and hand the not inconsiderable number of government holidays printed in red. The cheapest had the year on one sheet, a scroll of sorts attached to a metal strip on one end and a cloth loop to hang it from. Then there were the “God” calendars as we used to call them, with a single colourful picture of a deity, occasionally a classic mother and child image depicting Yashodhara and Krishna, inspired by the iconic paintings of Raja Ravi Verma. There would be a little flip calendar at the bottom, with pages to be ripped off month by month.

On walls and tabletops, in homes and offices, in stores, in hospitals and clinics, the calendar was an ubiquitous presence.

Then there were the calendars with heft and sheen — the corporate ones. “Best compliments of ABC Co. Ltd”. Some even came with a smaller spiral-bound desktop version, and the more coveted item — the diary. Much sought after, the diary was a source of contention in the family, going to the elder sibling, if not elders, ostensibly to jot study notes, but sooner or later covered with sketches, doodles, and some very non-academic notes. Elder siblings went to great lengths to keep them away from the prying eyes and hands of pesky younger ones. By the time January ended, there were nearly a dozen around the house, and by now the domestic help and drivers were also getting some.

Of the calendars we received in Jamshedpur, where I spent my growing years, there were a couple of particularly memorable ones. I particularly remember the one from Tata Steel, or Tisco as it was called then. Printed on thick, glossy paper, it was an annual treasure that blew all others into backrooms. I can’t remember all of them, but I do recall at some point, the Tisco calendar became a veritable repository of contemporary Indian art prints. These art calendars were a limited-edition item, and typically distributed to senior officers. Somewhere there must have been a simpler one for wider distribution, but this one was eagerly awaited in our home.

It was through this calendar that I first chanced upon the long-necked, dark-eyed women of V. Prabha; and the guileless, mysterious faces of Anjolie Ela Menon’s protagonists, to my best recollection. Later, the strikingly modernist lines of M.F. Husain. Art that I would have never been exposed to in my little corner of Jamshedpur.

So iconic was this calendar that it outlived the year, not leaving the house long after its time was done. What was its secret? After its calendar life, the pages were resurrected as framed art prints on walls in a number of households, including mine. Not just that, visiting relatives often asked for and carted away the neatly cut out pages. My mother chanced upon one while visiting a home in Patna: they had relatives in Jamshedpur and the print was identical to what we had on our walls. Tisco calendar? My mother asked, somewhat undiplomatically. Yes. The lady replied, a little embarrassed. And then a knowing smile was exchanged!

Today, Google and Windows do our time-flipping for us so that we don’t have to. The digital calendars on our computers, mobile phones and watches automatically ring in the new year. Facebook algorithms generate little calendars of our activities and friendships, sometimes even with our own siblings!

So as time slips by, paper calendars become more and more relics of a bygone era. Yes, some corporations and stores still put them out, but somehow they seem to lack the beauty and class of the old ones. Except the odd doctor’s waiting room or a government office, I hardly see wall calendars anymore. Certainly none that catches my attention.

Is it time to bring them back? Anachronisms, and not necessary, perhaps. But just like the wall clock that ticks away reassuringly in a corner, even though it’s my phone that I keep time with, there’s a gap on a wall or a desk somewhere that I know a good calendar can still fill with style and elan.