It was absolutely crazy and bizarre… it was Saturday, 19th July, the college was closed due to a bandh called by a political party (we work 6 days a week)…I was at home…though Shruti works only 5 days a week, she had some work at EFLU…I completed some pending jobs in the morning and finished my lunch…I thought I’d take a nap…I had fallen asleep and sometime after that the power would have gone off, as it usually does these days in Hyderabad…I must have been really tired not to have woken up immediately, because the minute the ceiling fan stops moving, I start sweating immediately…it must have been after the power cut that I had this dream…
I was in this place, which was vaguely familiar…can’t place it…sort of a compound with old houses, patchy moist walls, overgrown plants and so on…and one of my teachers (where she came from, I don’t know!!!), who is also a friend now, asks me to help her in discussing something with her students…for this we had to go from this place I described to another place…I went in a car and the driver was Anthony, the driver of one of the professors in our college (how Anthony came in to all this is something I don’t understand…)…so, Anthony drives me to this place, which is totally unfamiliar, which is a nice enough kind of a building…I get down and proceed towards the building when I see this rather shed like structure with earthen floor and thatch like roof…this structure had a door like opening over which hung a kind of banner or board announcing the name of a stationery/book shop…I forgot all about my teacher-friend and went inside…
As I entered, I saw that the shop was to the right…an open kind of shop, which had stuff arranged in wooden steps on a platform kind of structure at a height of some 5 to 6 feet from the floor…there was this person sitting there…I asked him if he sold fountain pens…he said ‘yes,’ and showed me a fountain pen made entirely of wood, not ebonite…I have never seen anything like this before…it was sort of flat looking…had a flat but ‘bulged in the middle’ kind of barrel, and a similar flattish section…it had a nib, but the pen did not have a cap…I asked him the cost, and he said, ‘six’…and then added, ‘for 10 more rupees, I will fix a better nib’… so I presumed the cost to be ‘sixty’ rupees…and asked him to fix the better nib… the entire shop looked like a pen workshop…he then took out a box and hunted around for the ‘better’ nib…this much is still clear…then, things appeared vague for some time…
Sometime during this, I reminded myself that I had sauntered in to this place and that I had actually to go and meet my teacher/friend…as I was thinking about this, and slowly started walking out, with an intention of informing them of my whereabouts and coming back, I saw that my friend had come out to see where I was and saw that I was coming out of this pen shop…and she smiled, saying, ‘haan…it had to be a pen shop, that’s what was keeping you, are you coming in or not?’ I remember making a silly face and sort of said that I’ll be there with all of you soon and went back in…and what I remember is this person giving me this wooden pen with a nib fixed and of all things, a ‘lantern’ attached to the nether part of the barrel …I was kind of taken aback…it was not a battery operated torch, but a proper kerosene or spirit ‘lantern’ with a wick and glass cover and a bottle like thing to hold kerosene/spirit…and it was sort of fixed…a lantern usually swings from its handle, but this lantern didn’t swing from the bottom of the pen…it was not a big lantern, but it was longer than the pen…around 8-9 inches…the entire thing measured around 15 inches…slightly longer than a foot-ruler…he gave me this ‘pen’… I didn’t know what to do with this…how am I going to use this, I thought? I asked him the price and he said, ‘1,500 Rupees’…from 60 to 1500 was a big jump…I was hesitant…
And then I remember asking him if he had any ‘Wilson’ fountain pens…he then asked a young chap to look after my request…this young man then came and sat cross legged (I don’t know where he came from…I didn’t seem to notice him before) at the counter-like structure and pulled out a wooden tray kind of thing, which had a lot of compartments…each compartment contained a different part of a fountain pen…some familiar and some totally unfamiliar like thin light blue plastic-like rectangular pieces…I was intrigued …and this young man proceeded to put things together from this tray to make this pen… I have never seen anything like this…he looked like a jewellery shop worker… I asked him something, I don’t remember what, and this man looked up…to my surprise, I saw that this was no longer a young man, but a man clearly above 50 years of age…when this replacement occurred, I can’t say…I don’t remember what I had asked him, but what he said must have been in response to my query…this elderly person asked me not to buy that particular brand…because that is not good…or something to that effect…by that time, the pen I had asked for was ready…I hadn’t realised that a pen could be made like this…assembled in front of your eyes…like pizza with your choice of toppings…I asked the price of this pen, and he said 1,000 rupees… again, I was taken aback…a thousand rupees for an ordinary pen!…but I wanted to buy that pen…
Somewhere around this time, I must have woken up…and I could recall some parts vividly…I haven’t dreamt of fountain pens before…must have been an overdose of fountain pen related talk and discussions with Hari and shopping in Gaya and Hyderabad, all those photos and posts here and at FPN…must have taken its toll… when I realised what had happened, I sent an SMS to Hari telling him that I had gone totally bonkers and related in a few words what I had seen in my dream…Hari is understanding in these matters and sent a reply soon enough, saying with written laughter that I was now totally assimilated…
I might have taken some liberties with the sequence of events, but I have tried very hard to retain in memory whatever I had seen in the dream by going through the whole sequence every day till today…But, that image of the ‘lantern pen’ will remain for a long time…I wish I could draw well, I would have sketched a rough drawing of this great multipurpose pen…!!!
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