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
Indian Fountain pens are my dope. The never cease to give me a high. Especially if they are of a certain vintage, hand turned, eye-dropper fillers, made of ebonite and sport pure, “desi” nibs. The ones that give me mind-altering experiences are naturally the type that immediately transport me to
This was in 2016. I was going to Bangkok to teach and he was going there with his distributors for what is known as an off-site. If you have travelled the Kolkata-Bangkok route you would know what carriers mean. They are a lot who travel regularly to Bangkok for buying
There are many interesting fountain pens that may not have been the movers and shakers of the industry, but had made contributions worth recognising in the annals of fountain pen development. As a matter of fact, most of them come replete with histories that make fascinating reading, just as their
Firingi Kali. The naming itself is hatke, different. The Bengali word Firingi, can be traced back etymologically to old French, through Persian, Urdu and Hindi, where it denotes a foreigner, especially a British or a white person. Kali, in typical Bengali means ink, though phonetically it can also be construed
Write your way out, a-la Shakespeare or Camus, to create for eternity. For the dawn will certainly break. Shakespeare was apparently quarantined when he had written “King Lear”. I have no way of knowing for certain whether he was ever quarantined in the real sense of the term as we
“A word after a word after a word after a word is power” – Margaret Atwood Having been fascinated with fountain pens since childhood, there always was a longing for me to use fountain pens. At an office event, a wine tasting, I saw one of the judges from Germany,
Aristocrat: still reigning supreme. Let me begin this piece with an inconvenient truth – there are two types of pen manufacturers, one, those that make pens for the collectors and two, the ones making pens for actual users. Those focusing on the collectors have it easy, for their products are
The lock-down is dragging on relentlessly, testing our patience, challenging our sanity, forcing the mind to flirt with depression as we remain confined, compelled to follow a routine that is not of our making. Lives of fountain pen lovers around the world too are badly impacted as many of us
The Holy Trinity – Prof Yashwant Pitkar, Yusuf Mansoor and BESC makes the fountain pen the common cause What can a professional architect have in common with a marine geologist that would attract students by the droves to hear them speak, that too on a holiday? Prof Dilip Shah, the
Endless Recorder Notebook and your prized Pen – a marriage made in Heaven A Glencairn tumbler for the Single Malt, any connoisseur will tell you, is de rigueur. Anything less and well, it is not the same. It is the same with Notebooks and Fountain pens. You Just cannot have
My father was a Government servant. He would bring work back home and seeing him sitting on the dining table after dinner, bent on dog-eared files was a daily sight. My remembrance is vivid – typed documents, covering letters in white paper followed by note-sheets in light green on whose
