Been ages since I last saw a hero pen. The authentic fountain ink pen that used to be a fancy of everyone of us when we were first introduced to ink pens in school. And then, how we used to getting so sentimentally attached to the single hero pen in our 'pencil' boxes..... Akhil, my officemate, revived those memories recently. He still uses those 332, 336 series. And whats best? He uses Chelpark blue ink.... Adi's all time favourite..... Since Adi dosent maintain a blog, I thought I did bring up his article written sometime back here.
To ink my thoughts
An ironical tagline of an advertisement that reads, “Everybody loves good handwriting”, is used to promote a ball point pen that supposedly improves one’s handwriting. Preposterous I say. Back when we were schoolchildren, when we graduated from the usage of pencils to that of pens, we were advised, nay, plain ordered by teachers, parents, elder siblings and the like to strictly use nothing but a fountain/ink pen. The use of a ball pen was frowned upon; the argument being, an ink pen improves one’s handwriting, and a ball pen does the right opposite. We were gifted with a good ink pen (which often turned out to be the much coveted Chinese made ‘Hero’ brand of pens) by uncles or aunts or avuncular friends of father, and were encouraged to take good care of it and use it carefully for years to come; the idea being, the longer you stuck to a particular ink pen the smoother it would write. Indeed, it was a matter of pride to own a fountain pen which one had been using for many years – an object of desire for one’s classmates – and such pens were to be guarded with one’s life!
If her/his majesty, the owner of such a pen, was magnanimous enough to permit lesser mortals to write a word or two with her/his pen – which (s)he would, more often than not (albeit with an affectation of not entirely glad about the prospect), for, who at that age does not like to show off – adulatory words and ‘ooh’ and ‘aahs’ and other expressions of delight would fill the classroom! This brings me to another popular belief of that era: that as time goes by, an ink pen is moulded in accordance with the owner’s style of writing – the way (s)he grips the pen, the angle at which the nib strikes the paper, and other such criteria. This aspect is primarily what qualifies an ink pen to be a very individualistic article. Like I mentioned, a proud owner of a well used ink pen might occasionally allow his/her pals to write a word or two with it, but strictly no more. Ink pens were not lent even to the best of buddies or worst of bullies. Sometimes, a person develops an emotional bond with his/her pen that has accompanied him for many years and withstood the test(s) of time (pun intended) much like a batsman would his favourite bat with which he made all his centuries. I know of people who have written all their examinations with the same pen and would have scored considerably less had fate forced them to write with another pen.
Juxtaposing a ball pen with an ink pen vis-à-vis the points just discussed cannot be more striking in its contrast. A ball pen hardly qualifies as a gift to be cherished. It is ephemeral; today, only the most penniless poet or unabashed miser would continue to reuse a ball pen by changing its refill, till the time it breaks (no pun intended this time though!). One would scarce consider a ball pen to be one’s prized possession (mind you, we are speaking here of the common ball pens meant for everyday use and not the gold embossed, diamond studded status symbols). A ball pen is so impersonal and dispensable that it is freely lent, lost, misplaced, and thrown, without the slightest realization of its loss. True, ball pens write more smoothly than most ink pens but that is because the former are assembly line products that are all the same. On the other hand, every ink pen has a character of its own, and an ink pen earns the honor of being described as smooth. That is what makes it special.
Some people with a more utilitarian bent of mind would perhaps scoff at all this and speak about one factor that is seemingly the ball pen’s USP and the ink pen’s bane – maintenance. A ball pen of decent quality does not leak, they would point, nor does it obstinately refuse to write all of a sudden when it slips into one of its melancholic moods, and it can be thrown from one corner of a classroom to another sans the fear of an ink shower! At them, I am tempted to hit right back, quite strongly at that, by quoting an old Tamil aphorism which translates to “A donkey cannot be expected to appreciate the smell of camphor!” I could not have put more succinctly myself! The aforementioned ‘ill’ qualities of an ink pen that are ridiculed by pragmatists are the very ones that cause the romantic’s heart to spring alive! No young man or woman can claim to have a complete schooling without ever going home with their pristine white uniform splattered generously with kaleidoscopic patterns of different hues - caused variously, by practical jokes, personal vendetta, gang fights, or sheer carelessness and, needless to say - receiving a sound thrashing for the misdeed. Come to think of it, the leaky nature of ink pens simply lead to an addition to the denizens of the pencil box - the ‘ink-cloth’ that was torn by mom from some old cotton fabric.
An aside – We used to play a game inside the classroom when at school, aptly christened ‘pen fight’, which involved placing one pen each by two players on extreme ends of the table, which they took turns to strike with their fingers, the same way one would a carom board striker, with the sole objective of knocking the opponent’s pen out of the table. The game was played mainly using pencils or ball pens but certainly not ink pens partly out of respect, but more for the practical reason that all that knocking about would result in an ink bath when the pen was opened after the game!
I go back to the fond memories of how my brother taught me to take good care of my ink pens. Of how he insisted during the annual summer vacation that I take apart my fountain pen (much like Mr. Bond would have his Browning, I used to fancy) and leave it in a bowl of water for a day and place it to dry in the open verandah the next afternoon so as to get rid of persistent problems caused by old, dry ink (the ink pen’s own version of annual spa and tan; can you name one ball pen that has had this privilege?). Of how he taught me to point the pen upside down, nib aimed inside the ink bottle, while screwing close the last few turns of the pen after filling it, to ensure that any extra ink does not spill out of the tank and at the same time aiding the pen in its ink flow. Of how he preferred the uncommon ‘Chelpark’ brand of ink over that of the more common and popular ‘Bril’ , and how I aped him in this aspect thus believing that my written words had a classy touch of subtle blue and not the gross dark blue of ‘Bril’ that I looked down upon!
Pray, these words of mine are not meant to stultify or demean the ball pen clan. They are meant only to reminisce about and share with the reader, my feelings toward the ink pen, and connect with my brethren; old timers like me who lament over the fast growing popularity of ball/gell pens at the expense of their more graceful and elegant predecessors who are fast reaching extinction. I concede, however, that this indignation of mine is probably due to my inability to accept the changes that the tides of time bring, and that users of quill pens would have felt much the same way when the ink pen made its debut!
