Simple and cute pen stands at handicrafts fair in Malappuram

While I was in Malappuram, I couldn't help going on a pen hunt… Malappuram is a medium sized town and one wouldn’t expect to find a full fledged pen shop there… but, I saw a couple of stationery shops in the street where the lodge was located… and I found some FPs there…well…that’s for another post… A ‘handicrafts mela (fair)’ was also on in the town and Shruti and I decided to see what they had on offer…our lodge was located in a place called Down Hill and it was literally ‘down the hill’ and this if you have visited one handcrafts fair in India, you know what to expect when you visit another… but you never know … things which wouldn’t have attracted my attention a year ago seemed to call out to me … like these two inexpensive pen stands that I saw in the Kerala State Handicrafts Stall … very ingeniously made from bamboo … bamboo looks suited for pen stands.

I bought two, in fact, they had only two models… the smaller diameter ones and the larger diameter ones … and the larger pen stand also has a small receptacle … for a specially made inkwell? or for a round shaped eraser… though when I bought them, I didn’t think in these terms … these looked nice and inexpensive…and I liked the ingenuity of using bamboo for pen stands … and those small paint dabs look like Japanese style flowers … For the purposes of this post, I have used the small diameter stand for my Leader and Brahmam celluloid FPs…you can see them in the photo…the stand looks made for these pens… and I have used the larger stand for the heavy thick FPs like the Guider Jumbo, Ratnam Supreme, and Deccan Major (brushed ebonite) … the bigger Deccan Masterpiece will be more appropriate I think…I have yet to get one…

I took some photographs of the pen stands at various nooks inside by flat…just to make them look interesting…

Our Enchanting Kerala Trip

Backwaters at Ponnani
At the Bharatapuzha River-gently swaying in the breeze

A two-storeyed Kerala style house opposite Thiruvegappura Mahakshetram

Kunthippuzha River from atop the Pulamanthole Bridge

The Thirumaandhamkunnu Bhagavathi Temple, Angadippuram

Shruti and I visited Kerala a week back…the first time I was stepping into God’s Own Country after 1978…I was thrilled…we were invited to conduct a 2-day workshop for District Resource Group members (high school teacher trainers) of Malappuram District…we were put up in Malappuram town…and the experience of conducting the workshop and the sightseeing, both were fabulous…the workshop was hosted by the EMEA College of Arts and Science, Kondotty and the District Panchayath, Malappuram…we visited Calicut beach, but it was dark by the time we reached there and the there was some kind of a power cut…so, no power and we saw the beach in darkness! Shruti is a regular water baby and even the darkness did not deter her from having a brief encounter with the Arabian Sea…this was on the evening of the first day of the workshop…

After the two days of workshop, we had kept a day in reserve for sight seeing…the coordinator of the workshop, Mr P P Roy and his colleague, Mr Prem Kumar accompanied us on this sightseeing tour…it was extremely gracious of them to spend a whole day with us...Mr Roy was with us throughout the 12 hours that we spent…we almost went around the district…we visited a couple of temples, just to see the lovely and earthy Kerala style temple architecture …we travelled through roads, lanes and bylanes and were rewarded with enchanting sights of greenery all around and the rivers and the backwaters and the Arabian Sea once again… I have lots to share about this trip … I will only post some photos now … more later ...