Those were simple, yet exciting times. Especially if you were a youngster going to school. No, we did not have even a fraction of the toys that young children possess these days, but we were content having the few possessions that we had. Fountain pens, among them. Mind you, in
Did Sulekha ever make pens? No, we are not talking about molded pens, but ebonite pens of a certain vintage, that can transport us back to those glory days of the freedom struggle, of Swaraj? At the least, to a time when Sulekha was the premier ink maker in the
Brahmam fountain pens, to most collectors of India made vintage or antique pens, is but a mystery, wrapped in a riddle, inside an enigma, so difficult it is to come across good, working pieces. Naturally, their scarcity leads to the creation of newer fables around them as the scamper to
Dhar Brothers and the story of Calcutta’s brush with fountain pen making excellence – fact, fiction or folklore? Imagine that you are so well known for your skills that the Commissioner of Calcutta Police sends his prized fountain pen to you for some repair work. Mind you, this is a
If Ink be the food of Love buy on, says Nandini Ramchandran, her tongue firmly in cheek. A lot of us went a little crazy in 2020. Some went bananas baking bread, others stirred up buckets of Dalgona Coffee. I went on a crazy online pen and ink shopping spree
Ohto pens are now in India, thanks to Tushar Vaghela I met Tushar Vaghela for the first time in the Ahmedabad Pen Show – fondly christened the Global Pen Expo – in the beginning of this year. Frankly speaking, I had reached the venue not expecting much, not having
A Doctor, a daughter and a fountain pen (sorry, many fountain pens) The joy of touching a pen to paper is, in my humble opinion, a sorely underappreciated one. Every drop of ink holds the power to change the world – or someone’s world, at the very least. I was
My father Mehmet Kamil was a bibliophile of the staunchest kinds. The book was his window to the world – his speeches of freedom, his best friends, his life. Hailing from a middle-class family and growing up in Turkey, the road that was to lead him to fortune and fame
Dilip Basak – meet the man with the Midas Touch Dilip Basak, the eldest of his four siblings was about eleven years old, when moved by his father’s struggle to run the family, he decided to drop out of school and help his father in his business as a pen
Hari Balakrishna on Fountain pen collecting Hari Balakrishna is one of the foremost authorities on India made fountain pens. An penthusiast who has carefully nurtured his all consuming love for everything fountain over the last three decades, painstakingly creating, in the process a collection that is unmatched both in quality and
BENU Parrot, the unboxing! It is nothing like anything that you have seen before. And, at first glance, you will not be at fault if you were, like me, led to think “how can a writing instrument be so radically different from our expectations and still be so beautiful”? Those
