Diary of an evening hunting fountain pens with Hari in Hyderabad - Part I

Hi everybody...

There is a lot to tell all of you…let me start from the most recent…that is, day before yesterday (28th April)…I met Hari (Balakrishna)…he had flown down from Bombay on official work to Hyderabad…Hari is one of those fascinating persons who is totally immersed in his hobby…he lives, breathes, sleeps, dreams fountain pens (FPs)…IMHO, Hari is a one-man storehouse of knowledge, information, secrets, and everything else about FPs...I became acquainted with him through posts on FPN…and we subsequently exchanged pen photos, FP info, personal FP experiences, etc., and it was Hari who gave me lots of tips and advice on what FPs to buy and what not to buy and I have benefited a lot from his advice…on the 28th evening, I saw a true FP fan at work…except for a brief period where we drifted into literature, it was FPs all the way…from around 7.15 pm till almost 10.45 pm…

Hari alighted at the bus stop near my house and he told me that he wanted to visit the shop near Paradise to see some Chinese FPs (I had mentioned my purchase of Chinese FPs and described them to him…this incident will appear as a flashback along with Chinese pen photos…in some future post soon)…and he also wanted to visit Deccan Pen Stores (DPS), Abids to collect some Advocate FPs that he had placed orders for…so we set out…before that I gave him a Hero FP, the big nib one, which I had bought for him and he gave me a no-nonsense (his term!) Sheaffer FP, which he had mentioned in one of his recent posts on FPN…and had bought one for me…thus, gifts exchanged… (and I am writing this post with this Sheaffer FP…I started this practice of writing and then typing so that I get a chance to exercise my FPs and also to regain the habit of writing)…we proceeded towards Paradise…we were talking about all along about FPs and he asked me whether I got a chance to visit Gupta Pen Stores (GPS) at R P Road, from where he had picked up one of the last surviving pieces of Misak Ebonite FPs in 2005 and had told me about it and had also given me the address and directions to this shop (he had mentioned that the shop had two Misaks and he had bought one and the other one should still be there and had asked me to check it out)…I told I had looked for this shop, but couldn’t locate it…by that time, we were nearing Chandana Brothers at Patny Junction and Hari and I decided to explore R P Road and got down there…we walked past the R P Road branch of DPS and Hari said GPS was after DPS towards Regimental Bazaar…he also remembered how the shop looked like and said that an old lady used to mind the shop…eventually, the shop that Hari had seen in 2005 came into Hari’s view and the lady was there in the shop too, but the shop was named Doulat Pen Stores…when I saw this shop, I told Hari that I had visited this shop earlier, but was not aware that this was the shop that he had mentioned as GPS…Hari said he must have read the name board in a hurry and somehow the name GPS had stuck in his mind…anyway…we climbed up the steps and asked the old lady for ebonite pens…she didn’t have any, she said regretfully…we made our way back to DPS and Zubair was there…Hari knows almost everybody at DPS…after exchanging pleasantries, Hari took some photos of the shop (I think he is soon going to write a Hyderabad Pen Shops post on FPN!)…Zubair then showed us some extremely tempting Brahmam gold nib ebonite FPs – 4 actually…Hari took photos of these fabulous pens and the nibs in close up…he was salivating at the sight of these pens…I could sense that…and he later said that these pens so captivated him that he wanted to bolt away with them!!! Hari being the meticulous kind, asked Zubair whether he could test write the nibs…Zubair agreed and we tried all the gold nib pens…Hari was bowled over by the extra fine gold nib Brahmam black ebonite…After generally despairing over our financial situations, we came out and headed towards DPS, Abids, giving a skip to the Chinese pens at Paradise…

The FP hunting trip continued...look out for part II and part III...

Jai