Ten Ten Ten
I wonder wonder wonder when
My pencil will become a pen !
Ten Ten Ten
It is a little known nursery rhyme, that I first heard long time after I had discovered the joy of writing with a fountain pen. The verses very aptly describe the thrill a ten year old felt when graduating from a pencil to pen. In our school it was going to the sixth standard (or sixth grade) that gave you the privilege of using a pen.
It was an event to look forward to , to own a pen. In Madras, in those days, the first pen for most students used to be a brand called ‘Writer’ ; Camlin and Pilot were the more advanced ones. Ball point pens were yet to become popular and gel pens of course were totally unknown.
Ball pens were difficult to write with and teachers were convinced that it was the sure-shot method to spoil your handwriting. So the only option was fountain pen with its cap, nib, neck and barrel. I spell out the parts as we were as conversant with the parts as the whole. We could even buy nib separately as just one fall was enough to break a good nib and there were many nib-breaking, heart-breaking, falls in a student’s life.
There is whole world of the fountain pen culture that is now almost extinct. If I were a celebrity, I would start a “Save Fountain Pen” campaign.
There used to be a brand called “President” that was thick and had a huge barrel . The barrel could take twice or thrice the quantity of ink that a normal pen could take. A friend of mine used to carry this pen along with a slim one and joke ” one is for writing and the other is a portable ink pot” . So it was !
Then came self filler pens that could suck ink from the pot avoiding the messy process of opening the barrel and filling with an ink filler. Unfortunately these pens could hold hardly half a ml of ink , good enough for signatures but not for the volume of work a student goes through.
Whatever pen we used a student could always be identified with ink stains all over. Index finger and the middle finger bore the brunt , though ink stains could be spotted just about anywhere; in the corners of shirt pockets,on desk-tops (due to frequent jerking of the pen to initiate the ink-flow) satchels, and sometimes on the face or lips. Students were always close to ink and ink to students.
नलायक बालक का बस्ता भारी होती है
और हाथ स्याही से काली होती है
(Northies, pardon me for any spelling mistake in my hindi)
There was a great excitement about using a new pen. Even today I feel it. There is a process of breaking in a new pen and every piece was different and every user was different. It is the process of tuning the user to the pen to ensure the smooth flow of ink and when the tuning is correct , the pen just glides on the paper and it is absolutely bliss. Some people use a glass to write on applying the right pressure to widen the split in the nib.
One pen, one user was the norm. That is one reason that a fountain pen lover swears by Shakespeare’s “Neither borrower nor a lender be thee”
While a pen is never borrowed , ink borrowing is an art by itself; can’t really be called borrowing as it is never returned. Hardly anybody had an extra pen , leave alone the bunch of pens a school kid carries these days.
At a critical juncture, say, during an examination, one may run out of ink. There is a frantic jerking of pen to squeeze out the last micro-drop of ink. Then you look around for a good Samaritan for rescue. Everyone is busy writing furiously, with one eye on the clock and the other on the answer-sheet (or may be neighbor’s answer-sheet). Then you find a friendly soul; there is no time for opening the neck of the pen and to do a barrel to barrel transfer; so, air to air re-fueling ensues. The donor just unscrews the neck of the a pen partially and screws it back for a nib to nib transfer of a few drops. A grateful smile follows ; that should help in completing the answer-sheet; way to bond specially in boarding schools.
These days we hardly see anyone using fountain pens. I do have a small collection , but I miss the range of colours ; there were many brands, Bril, Camel, Quink, Chelpark, Parker etc. Today we have just Camlin and Parker and only Black and Blue in most places.
Recently I had been to Coimbatore and was sauntering along the footpath leisurely. I spotted a tiny hole in the wall kind of shop with the board “Pen House” .I stopped to ask for Turquoise blue ink.
The shopkeeper’s eyes lit up; he said, though he did not have one at that moment, he could produce one in ten minutes. He was true to his word, he produced ink of eight colors; Royal Blue , Black, Blue black, Red, Green, Turquoise blue, Violet and Crimson. Voila ! Jackpot. The ink was manufactured by Daytone and was sold in plastic containers like the ones used for eye-drops or ear drops , though much larger. Later I learnt that the item was manufactured at Indore , about 20km from where I live!
The friendly shopkeeper, asked me what kind of pens I used, self-filler type or the tank type. When I said, the tank type, he was absolutely thrilled. He took out boxes and boxes of vintage pens from the 50s and 60s and also a whole range of expensive pens price ranging from Rs 2000 – Rs 5000. I bought a modestly priced pen of 1951 Model. I don’t think he earned much from that shop , but sure he was excited talking about pens past and present. May his tribe increase.
On my return to Mhow , one of the first things I did was to fill up Turquoise blue ink in the 1951 model pen .
