Time Machine : Pens

Time machines exist. In fact, we all have a few in our lives. Some tucked away in old boxes, some lying in plain sight but ignored and some in forgotten memories. Most of the times, we bump across them while looking for something else. But when we find them, they take us back years in the past and invoke a deep sense of nostalgia. You either smile, laugh or feel sad. And sometimes, all of them at the same time.

Pens.

I had seen my father always carry one in his pocket without fail. After all, you never knew when you had to fill in one of those numerous paper forms that you get handed at in most Indian establishments — the railways reservation form, the cash withdrawal bank slip or gas cylinder delivery form. With the digitization of most things around us, this ancient writing instrument lost its meaning in our lives pretty fast. Today, we don’t care much about the pen we use. As long as it writes, we are good. We don’t really have a personal favorite anymore. For instance, when I need one, I walk to the office stationery and pick one. Only to lose it again within a few hours in a meeting room or at someone’s desk. Pens we use today are of the cheap use-and-throw variety — ugly, lifeless, dull and devoid of any personality. But it wasn’t always like that.

Flashback to the 90s

When I was a kid in the 4th grade in the nineties, pens were the modern day equivalent of the tablets for today’s kids. I still remember the anticipation and excitement of moving to grade 5 when we could let go of the pencils and graduate to pens.

By the way, pencils are so boring. Pens are exactly opposite of them. Exciting, colorful and risky. If you make a mistake writing with a pen there is no going back. You couldn’t erase it. You scratch it and move on. Risky and edgy. Unlike pencils, you don’t put it in a box, you wear it on your pocket and show it off. Sometimes multiple ones together. Heck, pens have caps. No wonder they are cool.

First Love : The fountain pen

Beautiful, modest, and messy. Also known as the Ink pen or the nib pen, these were our introduction into the world of pens. Going to a stationery shop and buying the first fountain pen was such an experience. The cap would unscrew to reveal this thing of beauty. It housed a reservoir to store the ink which you would fill using the dropper from an ink bottle. The nib usually golden and silver colored would pull the ink from the reservoir using the capillary action onto the notebooks struggling to solve math problems of Highest Common Factors (HCF) and Lowest Common Multiples (LCM).

The war horse : Reynolds 045. Fine carbure

If exams were battle fields, the fine carbure, Reynolds 045 had to be part of your cavalry. Wearing blue and white this pen was seriously fast to ensure you were able to meet the 500 word count of your essay questions on time. And if you were one of those students, who was done early and had some extra time left to kill, you could always take out a blade and remove some of the lettering on the pen to read “old fine car”. (True OGs will understand)

And we always wondered what the hell did ‘fine carbure’ mean. And why 045. I investigated and turns out ‘carbure’ is French for carbide which is the material of the ball point. And Milton Reynolds, the founder of Reynolds pen company launched the first pens in October, 1945 in New York. So, the 045 is probably a reference to that.

The Reynolds 045 had many copy cats, the most popular one being the Indian version of Rotomac whose tag line was “likhte likhte love ho jaye”. It translates to “you will fall in love while writing” in English. (It’s funny in hindi)

Multiple personality disorder : The 5-in-1 ballpoint pen

An absolute monstrosity. Nothing could match the shock value of this pen. It was more of a device than pen to be honest.

5 different refills in 1 pen? What sorcery was this? The first time we saw this pen it left us awestruck. It seemed it was the perfect design. But you soon realized this was a non-functional show off. Using this pen for your day to day writing was impractical. Usually the guys who forged the teacher’s signature had these. The red ink came in handy.

Handsome stud : The Pilot pen

More expensive than your regular pens, you whipped this bad boy out when you needed to make an impression. It could make the worst of hand writings legible and could easily get you 2 marks extra on the 10 mark essay question. Sleeker and sharper than a Katana, this was cutting edge Japanese technology at its best. This pen justified the quote ‘A pen is mightier than a sword’.

Royalty : The Parker Pen

Aptly advertised on the television by the Shahenshah, Amitabh Bachchan, these became super popular.

But you never wrote with these. They came in a nice box and mostly stayed inside that never to be taken out to meet the commoners. You either received a parker pen as a birthday gift or gave these as a gift to someone else. If you look inside the lockers in Indian houses today, you will find at-least one 15 years old box of unopened parker pen.

Battle of the pens.

I am talking about a literal battle of pens more colloquially known as “Pen fighting” which was the most popular classroom game beating book cricket and bottle cap football. A highly thrilling game involving strategy, team-work, timing and technique. Folks would rig their pens with weird contraptions in the quest to knock out the other team’s pens off the bench. In terms of excitement a good game of pen fighting could rival a football derby and a Wimbledon final. If kids these days are not playing this in the classrooms, they are missing out on some serious fun. But who knows there probably is an online version of pen fighting available on the Appstore?

Signing Off

Once the primary tool of the office going intellectual man, replaced now by the computer keypad, pens have retired to become show pieces at best. I wonder, if I visit my home in Kolkata and dig through all the old stuff, how many of these writing treasures will I be able to salvage. I think I will find many. After all, mothers never throw away anything.

In fact, all this pen talk makes me want to find my fountain pen and one of those old diaries and write a paragraph or two in it.

Wait… Old diaries? That’s another time machine.