I wasn’t always Zippy, the School Bag.
Once, I was just a roll of bright red fabric, stacked in a warm corner of a big, bustling bag factory. The air smelled of fresh cloth, glue, and the sugary chai that the workers sipped from steel tumblers. Around me lay other fabric rolls blue, green, yellow, even shiny silver. We whispered about what we might become, cushions? Curtains? Superhero capes? None of us guessed school bags.
One sunny morning, a man in a light-blue uniform, Ramesh, unrolled me on a huge cutting table. Snip-snip-snip! His giant scissors sliced me into neat pieces, my sides, my front pocket and my back panel. It tickled.
The sewing team was next. Rows of workers sat behind humming machines, their feet tapping pedals like musicians. The sound was a mix of whirrrr, thump and tack-tack-tack.
They stitched me together, added sponge for my back and fitted my straps with extra padding, all done by Sunny, who hummed old songs while working. “Strong straps for strong kids,” he muttered.
Then came my first zipper, smooth and shiny like a row of tiny teeth. Sarla, the zipper lady, tugged it back and forth. Zip-zip-zip! “Nice! This little fellow’s got a smooth run,” she grinned. I beamed inside.
By the time I was finished, I wasn’t alone. Around me stood others:
• Rex, the navy-blue sports bag, broad-shouldered and confident.
• Rosie, the pink polka-dot bag, who fluttered her straps like they were eyelashes.
• Tuffy, the rugged dark green bag, with extra pockets and a “don’t-mess-with-me” look.
• Doodle, the yellow bag covered in cartoon prints, who could never stay still and kept jingling his zipper pull like a bell.
We met in the packing room, our very first “bag party.” Stacked together in a heap before boxing, we made big plans.
“I hope we all end up in the same shop,” Rosie sighed dreamily.
“Yeah!” Doodle jingled. “Imagine being on the same shelf! We could watch kids pick us!”
“I just hope my future kid’s a football fan,” Rex muttered. “I’m built for sports.”
We all laughed, bumping straps like old friends.
But then came the sorting.
Shiny bags like Rosie and Rex were wrapped in glossy plastic and slid into golden boxes. They got the fancy van, headed to big-city malls with air-conditioning and display spotlights.
Tuffy and Doodle were packed into medium cartons for busy local stores, the kind with plastic buckets stacked outside and a shopkeeper who yells prices at passing customers.
And me? I got the surprise of my life.
I was packed in a carton with Rosie. Meena, the quality check lady with glasses, looked at us and said, “These two, high quality, no scratches, they’re going to Rajsons Stationery World in the city. Top place.”
The joy was short-lived.
Because when the tape sealed the boxes, we realised, we were splitting up.
The goodbye was chaos:
“Keep your straps strong, Doodle!” I called.
“Don’t let them overstuff you, Tuffy!” Rosie shouted.
Rex pretended not to be sad but muttered, “See you… somewhere.”
Doodle tried to lighten the mood: “If you get a kid who draws on you with crayons, Zippy, send me a postcard!”
We laughed, but inside, our fabric felt heavy.
The trucks came, a sleek white one for the high-end deliveries, an old rattly one for the smaller shops.
“Bon voyage, my friends!” I yelled as our doors closed. Rosie squeezed my strap. “Here we go.”
As the van pulled away, I watched Tuffy and Doodle in the other truck getting smaller and smaller until they were just specks.
And that’s how my journey began, not alone, but not quite with everyone I wanted beside me.