THE PEN -2

 

THE PEN -2

Those of us who have had the early phase in the early  independent India, can travel down the memory lane , to bring out the then prevalent practices in school education. Children who were elders to us by a few years had the ‘pen” made of wooden handle with a clip to hold a nib. The nib of the outfit was a metallic piece with a flat edge; it had to be dipped in ink, as the handle of the pen cannot hold ink. After a word or two, the nib tip would dry up, and a ‘holy dip’ was essential to write further. Children used to carry a bottle of ink as a part of the learner’s kit. Often in fight with classmates, the ink bottle would be smashed  , spilling the fluid on each other’s fabric. For the succeeding day another bottle would be needed. In some households, buying ink wax a luxury to arm about half-a dozen children with daily need of ink .They used to procure ink tablets; each tablet was water-soluble , yielding the coloured fluid- the ink .   Innocent kids would share half –a tablet of ink with a friend to help the latter. In the process of breaking the tablet, fingers would get soiled and it was a task to ‘erase the sin’ by a liberal water bath to those fingers. Yet, they would betray the child for his/her philanthropy –ill placed as the beneficiary was economically as good. Such was the frugal living those days, as money was never in free flow, though affection was copious between kids and all neighbours.  With the advent of technology in using plastics/ rubber/ similar material, fountain pens of varied size, build and quality entered the consumer market. It was more preferred for its ‘easy to carry’ / avoidance of extra load of ink bottle, ink tablet and so on; the fountain pen was a product of delight and prestige. Needless to say- that soon pen ‘brands’ were preferred over   the anonymous ‘local’ items. But, brands meant a higher price and the affordability tag enhanced the owners’ prestige. Quite a few names cross my mind as pen products. 

A survey shows PARKER and SCHAEFFER were the most popular pen brands while a number of others –MONTBLANK, WATERMAN, ,ESTERBROK, AURORA too are listed. The state of our economy then could ill afford such global brands; our children had good enough local brands in PILOT, WRITER, BLACKBIRD , NAVY –all very good for writing. Slowly, our craze for ‘overseas’ stuff encouraged the arrival of contraband products. The most popular of them was HERO that had a reputation for smooth writing. Advances in R/D of plastic products opened the market for a category of pens named JOTTER PENS. They had an ink filled catridge , that can be replaced upon completion of the writing fluid within; But, the jotter pen was a little expensive and the average users preferred inexpensive ones ; that resulted in a boom of BALL PEN –AN INNOVATION which came out with REFILL –A PRELOADED ink tube with an in-built writing head. The narrow terminal/writing head has a tiny ball that rolls and helps the writing fluid to seep out for writing. Though attractive for avoiding the use of ink , ink bottle, ink filler etc., ball pens had to face stiff resistance from banks for signing bank instruments/ agreement and affidavit , because the then ball pen ink had the innate weakness of ‘smudge’ as a time-bound effect in papers/ documents . So, legally valid execution of bank instruments and answer papers in University examinations could be written only by fountain pen ink So, ink pens had a certain level of public patronage , until ball pen ink was made ‘free of ‘defects’ , whereupon all ink users turned to ball pen. Yet, the elegance of handwriting using a fountain pen is far ahead of that by ball pen. This is because, for writing, one has to exercise physical pressure , leaving a gentle impression on the backing paper and signatures could be hijacked , without a legal clearance thereof.  So, fountain pen generally enjoys acceptance in all places.  It is more likely to stay on until the practice of fountain pen as a valid tool for executing documents continues. That is the story of fountain pen – at least as I know it

If pens can boast of history can inks be far behind?  Yes, they too had names, competitors, shades of colour and what not. Recall the famous Indian ink brand-  IRIS –TYPICAL BLUE or BACK or RED or GREEN. As fate would have it, partnership issues plagued the brand and by 1965, it split into 2 competing names –BRIL and NURIT. [1965 SEEMS TO HAVE BEEN AN YEAR OF SPLIT [as VISWANATHAN –RAMAAMOORTHY fell apart as MSV and TK R.]  Likewise, BRIL SURVIVED better. Another brand was QUINK from the house of PARKER. Under the requirement of Indianization, Quink was re-named Chelpark; their Turquois blue was a heartthrob among fans of that version. Another domestic brand of ink was NAVY- a -Madurai stuff. To date, ink and ink pens stay with pride though not with their traditional majesty of yester decades.

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