Of fountain pens.

When in Mysore last week, I saw my grandfather's fountain pen. And I found myself picking it up and admiring it and gushing about how no one uses fountain pens these days and how long it was since I had even set eyes on one.

And that, as usual, took me back to school. How precious fountain pens were! Especially as we had just left "childish" pencils behind, and now were considered old enough to actually write with pens! Though some of us thought that ball point pens were better, we were told to use only fountain pens until our handwriting "gets set".

I remember that mine had a black body and a gold cap, and the nib was a small, elegant, one, not one of those "atrocious" large ones. I took great pleasure in taking upon myself the responsibility of filling ink carefully into the pen, with an ink filler. I loved the colour of the ink in the ink bottle. Rich, dark, blue - Royal Blue, said the name on the bottle - truly royal it was. Of course, I hated the same ink just as much when it got onto my fingers.

A little later, I got a new pen, which did not need an ink filler. It had a mechanism built into the pen itself - you depress the little button at the side, dip the pen into the ink bottle, and let go - and the pen "drank up" the ink. This pen even had a tiny window that told me when the ink in the pen was getting over, and it was time to fill up. In spite of all this, I very often forgot to refill my pen and discovered the slip only after going to school. And then it was time to take the help of the adroit fingers of a friend who would share some of the ink from her pen, by pouring it directly into my pen. For you see, you couldn't borrow fountain pens, because "the nibs took the shape of the inclination of the owner's writing, and if anybody else used it, the nib would split".

When the topic of fountain pens came up, my parents talked about ink wells and blotting papers, both of which were alien to us. Blotting paper, at least, I have laid eyes on some time in my life, but ink wells? Those were ancient! To think they actually had to keep dipping their pens into a bottle of ink to write! [A piece of chalk in our boxes absorbed any accidental leakage of ink from our pens - we had no need for blotting paper].

Fountain pens had lots of other uses too. We had a game in class, where we took a sheet of paper, drew a broad, curved path from point A to point B, and rubbed a piece of candle wax along the path. We then let loose a drop of ink from our pens on the path at point B, and by turning and twisting the paper, we had to bring the drop of ink to point B, without it smudging the paper. The narrower the path, the greater your skill. Needless to say, I was pretty hopeless at it. My expert friends had to get new rough books every week, they tore that many sheets to play this game!

Fountain pens were great weapons too, against unsuspecting classmates and detested teachers. A surreptitious flick of the wrist, and drops of ink settle on the target's back - and the perpetrator could virtually go undetected, because the target doesn't discover the misdeed until much later, unless, of course, someone squealed (and squealers were so quick to be ostracized, that this was a remote possibility).

When we were given permission to graduate to ball point pens, fountain pens were forgotten... I don't even remember where mine went.... but have you noticed, the handwriting is never quite as good as in a dot pen as in a fountain pen.

Now of course, pens themselves seem to be getting outdated - the last time I used a pen was to perhaps sign a cheque or a credit card statement (that might give you an impression that I am very rich, but that would be wrong). Just as I say, "Ink wells? Wasn't that messy?", my grandchildren might ask me, "You actually held something in your fingers and wrote with it? How painful!"....... Who knows?