Pens: A Trip down Memory Lane

A few days back, I happened to see a pen of the brand name Hero (popularly known as the Chinese pen), with its typical needle like nib, smooth round body and a golden cap. It was ages since I had seen it and I was transported back in time, the time when I had first started writing with a pen, back in 1997 when I was in the fifth standard. It was a time when, for students like me, a pen was as much an object of attention and discussion as it is today for mobile phones and other gizmos.

Back in 1997, our teachers did not allow us to use ball pens thinking that our handwriting might get spoiled in the initial years. Instead we had to use good old fountain pens to write. Gel pens were just making their appearance in the market. Writing with a fountain pen was a joy for me and a pain for the one who diligently washed my clothes.

Early in the morning I would go to the school in spotless white uniform and return with ink stains on my shirt and fingers smeared in ink. A drop of rainwater could wipe the pages clean as if nothing was ever written on them. Writing with pencils would have been much better.

Pens were symbols of prestige and to some extent were like the clothes one wore. So the typically reserved and intelligent students and toppers of the class preferred to write with the Hero pen or some other fountain pen of which they took special care. Then there was a student who was ambidextrous when it came to writing and could write so beautifully and uniformly that it was difficult to make out if it was a computer printout or not. This fellow always wrote with a Pilot pen, the ones with a special ink and recommended only for advanced users who knew how to handle it. For the rest of us, pens were mere writing instruments and thus had no preference as such.

I was in the 8^th standard, when Amitabh Bachchan started endorsing Parker Pens. Soon it became a craze and everyone from executives to constables to students in my class had their own Parker. It had nothing other than a curved and conspicuous symbol on its cap which served as a status symbol. In the same year, I met a slightly eccentric character who used to get a new pen every day. In the morning he would start dissecting the pen to understand its intricacies and working and by the time he was about to leave for home, the pen had been rendered useless. In one such experiment I started sucking the ink out of a ball pen refill and before I knew my mouth was full of ball pen ink. I rushed to the wash basin and kept scrubbing my tongue, teeth and all corners of my mouth. Given my fear for such substances, I felt for a moment that my end was near. This did not deter me from continuing my experiments. I owe my knowledge of the understanding regarding the construction of pens to this guy who soon left my school. In the 9^th standard, Pierre Cardin made its entry and started competing with the Parkers. Many times our discussion revolved around which was the best pen, the costliest, the smoothest and other details which today seem petty and irrelevant to me.

I progressed to the 11^th and then to the 12^th standard. During these days it was believed that no study was possible in school and therefore school time meant playtime. So a new game called pen fight was invented. As the name suggests, the aim of the game was to dislodge the pens around you such that they fell from the table or bench wherever it was played. The last pen standing would be the winner. Any number of pens could take part. It was very simple and even more engrossing.

By the time I had come to college, everybody had been bitten by the cell phone bug but I remained immune to it, as I do to this day. Since then I have never come across a fountain pen, let alone someone using it. So to conclude, in this world of extravagance and exaggeration, your pen could be your fashion accessory. It might even tell something about you.