The Haunting Of Lost Erasers

Have you ever finished using an eraser completely till there was nothing left but dust? Let me frame a more likely scenario, you wrote something with a pencil and you wished to erase what you had written for you had made a mistake. You brought out your eraser to erase it and continued writing with the pencil later. However, a few days later you realize that you have lost the eraser and can’t remember where you left it. Sounds familiar? Well, I have a theory on the absurd disappearances of erasers. Erasers are haunted. WAIT! Don’t stop reading just yet. I can explain.

I believe that every word we write using a pencil has a soul, it’s own set of emotions and a spirit. When we decide to erase what we’ve written, we are able to get rid of its material aspect: the graphite from the paper is lifted and it turns to dust. But the question I ask is where do the souls of the words go? Here is where our primary object of focus, the eraser, comes into the picture. My theory is that the eraser sucks the souls of the words into itself. Thus, the eraser is haunted by the spirits of the words forgotten. Now, you may consider it highly unlikely since the eraser seems so harmless, neat, and white, and it is so soft to touch. How can something so timid suck in souls, you ask ? Well, go ahead and try to explain how you lost your eraser in primary school and have no recollection of what happened. Erasers are haunted since that’s where words go after they die and are forgotten forever. Once a word’s soul is trapped within an eraser, there is no way out since the rubber walls only let things in and they never let anything out back again into the world of the living.

The eraser is white in colour which is generally considered to be perfect and I agree that in any other scenario, white would be considered perfect. But when I look at the white in this eraser, I am reminded of a ghost on Halloween. Just like a ghost, the eraser is white and cold to touch. It has no body, no eyes, no ears, and no life, like a spirit wandering the halls of a creepy old mansion.

Another connotation of white can be taken from the Hindu tradition of wearing white at funerals. Just like those sad, lifeless clothes, the eraser witnesses death, the death of words.

You can also see the grief lines at the edge of the eraser, which also indicate death. The smooth rubber texture of the eraser prevents the spirits from breaking free, and they remain trapped within the white walls. There is also a roman arch at one end of the eraser in the picture attached that represents weight: weight of all the spirits it carries within and the weight it experiences trying to cover up our mistakes. An eraser is the only way to cover up our mistakes in life, and maybe that’s what haunts the erasers, our mistakes. Maybe we are the reason our erasers are haunted, just like everything else that we have ruined by using them for our selfish needs. Further, two vertical parallel lines can be observed along the vertical edges of the eraser which show that the spirits are opposing their entrapment within the rubber walls. They yearn to be free. This leads me to the answer to the mysterious disappearances of erasers. Once an eraser is filled with the spirits of the words, it disappears. We never see it again since it leaves our world and travels in between worlds of the living and the dead. These elements mentioned above make this eraser a work of art.

Another element that can be seen is movement. Movement is seen in the to and fro motion observed while erasing something. The to and fro motion indicates nervousness or anxiety which one might experience while writing something since one is unsure of what they have written. Time is another element that can be seen in this object as it gets used up eventually and it becomes physically smaller. Thus, by looking at an eraser and its size, you can calculate how much time has passed. Hence, an eraser is an object of art if you consider the elements mentioned above.

There is a certain kind of beauty that accompanies mystery and horror. Why else would most of us be attracted to horror movies? There is something so captivating about the unknown that even if we are afraid, our curiosity pulls us towards the mystery. Thus, I see art in this eraser because of the mystery that it holds. One might never know all the words this eraser has been a witness to. This eraser has been a part of secrets, fights, jokes and many other memories and that’s what makes this object a work of art.

People generally don’t ever think about erasers as art since it isn’t the most aesthetically interesting object. But that’s the case with most art- art is neglected until one day someone sees an object and sees something different from what others see and thus a work of art is found.

I think what fascinates me the most about an eraser is that it has the power to undo things. In a way, it’s almost like travelling back in time. When you erase your mistake, you go back to the moment before you made the mistake and hence, you could control an aspect of your universe. This leads me to the realization that the smallest of things hold so much power without us even realizing it. According to me, power is art too.

Lastly, as mentioned before, the eraser reminds me of death which is the ultimate truth of life and hence, it is art.

Aparajita Mukherjee