Fables Heard and Seen - I...Space Pen...

I heard this anecdote from somebody or read it somewhere…can’t remember which now… anyway, here it goes…

When the Americans started going to space, the astronauts in the space ships supposedly faced the problem of leaking pens due to pressure related issues…I don’t know whether they were using fountain pens or ball pens…but since both contained liquid…of varying viscosities though… the leaking problem would have existed for both kinds of pens…the astronauts had problems writing in space because of this…and they had to do quite a bit of writing…making notes of their experiments and noting down observations…so, they reported this to their ground staff…and asked the engineers to find alternatives…the ground staff people started in right earnest and commissioned the designing of a new pen that would withstand pressure so that the ink wouldn’t leak…pen experts were consulted…and while all this was going on, it dawned on one of the engineers that the Russians too were sending their cosmonauts to space and they too would be facing the same problem of leaking pens and they too would have found some solution to this problem or maybe are in the process of finding one…so, this person goes to his superior who had enough powers to speak to the Russians directly and told him about what he thought…and suggested that instead of reinventing the wheel, they could make use of the Russian solution in this matter and as this was not a state security issue, the Russians would cooperate… and this American general or whoever called up his Russian counterpart and spoke to him… told him about the problem American astronauts are facing and asked him what Russians are doing about this…the Russian general or whoever replied… “We use a pencil.”

Here endeth the lesson…

This could be an apocryphal story…this might never have happened…this could be a cold war story made up by the Russians…this could be…anything…

Is the ‘story’ about the pen and the pencil, Americans and Russians, or something else altogether…?

Watching Dev D...Anurag Kashyap's take on Devdas

I watched Dev D at PVR's yesterday...I had wanted to see what Anurag Kashyap had done with the theme...I was not disappointed...in fact, I got more than I expected...the movie is an interpretation of the Devdas theme, first conceptualised by Sharat Chandra Chatterjee in his novel called Devdas...it was subsequently made into movies, and many movie stars in many languages in India immortalised the role of the hero...so much so that any young man in India who suddenly starts growing a beard is thought as growing it out of being rejected by his girlfriend...and is called 'devdas'... and if he starts drinking, the name becomes all the more appropriate...because all the movie Devdas-es start growing a beard and start drinking...ostensibly to forget the pain of losing the girl...Paro...

I often wondered why Devdas became so famous...in fact, he is a loser, who has commitment-phobia, and who didn't have enough guts to run away with Paro...and Paro having had enough, marries a widower with two kids... then Devdas starts pining... and in all the movies based on the novel, Devdas is shown as a tragic hero...

Anurag Kashyap shows Devdas as who he is actually supposed to be ... a loser ... the movie then starts becoming interesting ... and gives it a different spin... and the treatment that it gets is really edgy...it kind of flies very close to being 'dangerous'...but comes back to terra firma in time...

Anurag Kashyap thanks Danny Boyle in the initial credits and I again wondered what Danny Boyle had got to do with an essentially Indian themed movie...that too brought onto the silver screen many times over... and then when the movie started 'moving' and 'grooving,' I got it... Anurag Kashyap is obviously inspired by Danny Boyle's Trainspotting and it shows in the many ways in which scenes are framed... and sometimes some scenes and images are obvious nods to Trainspotting images...and the ending is, if I may so after reading so much about Danny Boyle's films and also having seen Trainspotting, is also inspired by Danny Boyle... watch the movie and you'll know... and surprisingly, I don't recall any review mentioning this Danny Boyle connection... maybe I didn't read all of them or didn't read whatever I read carefully enough...

The Deccan Masterpiece...

Hi friends…
The pen under discussion was a chance find at the Deccan Pen Stores, Secunderabad … it is called the Deccan Masterpiece... and here I think the Deccan people have tried to style this Masterpiece on the lines of ‘The Masterpiece’ that all pen lovers know about… you have the twin gold coloured bands on the cap, the clip is golden in colour with a ball at the end and on top of everything (literally!) is a round white circle, reminding you of something similar of a different shape …
The nib is the king in this pen…honestly…I hadn’t seen such a ‘big’ nib before… when I was shown the Masterpiece for the first time, I refused to buy it saying that the nib looked like a knife point… and even when I reserved one for Hari and when we went to buy that one, I was once again not enthused enough…the nib again! And just as it happens with pen addicts…I decided to buy it only to complete the Deccan brushed ebonite collection… and when I asked for the Masterpiece… I liked the design, of course… I opened the cap and there it was…the ‘bruiser’ nib… and so, I bought the Masterpiece … I got it filled with black ink… and it lays down a slightly more than fine not-so-wet line… and as with Deccan Advocates, the Masterpiece also has no starting problems… and I picked up the Masterpiece after 10 days today and it started writing from the first stroke onwards… This is the best thing that I like about Advocates and now the Masterpiece…

Now, something for the statistically minded…the pen is made of Ebonite; Brushed surface with polished barrel end and cap top; polished also at cap lip and barrel lip; the section looks like it is ebonite; and the nib and feed are fitted perfectly – no movements at all; the pen is slightly shorter...the pen has a screw cap – 7 turns to unscrew; two gold coloured bands on cap; golden coloured clip with a ball at the end, and the clip gives a satisfying click when clipped to and unclipped from my shirt pocket… Nib is Size 40 steel…length capped slightly more than 6 inches; uncapped 5 ¾ inches; posted 7 ½ inches…

Doesn't the pen look grand? like a true masterpiece...no?

Jayasrinivasa Rao

Reynolds Ministere...an unexpectedly good looking FP...and a good writer too...

I didn’t know the existence of this Reynolds fountain pen, though Reynolds is well-known in India for their ball-pens. It is also ironic because quite a few traditional fountain pen makers in India attribute the shutting down of their units to the soaring popularity of Reynolds ball-pens. I remember seeing a Reynolds fountain pen-ball pen set long back in a stationery shop here, but the FP did not impress me much (I later found out that it was called Reynolds Accent). A couple of years back, Reynolds (India) opened their showroom in Hyderabad in Prasad’s Multiplex. I had gone there to watch a film and I had some time to spare and decided to go in and see what they stocked. I saw this very good looking fountain pen available in 2 colours, marbled green and marbled blue. The price was not too high, so I decided to buy the green one. They said that this FP was an imported piece!! That settled the matter (ha ha ha…)…No model name was written on it anywhere. I came back and tried their website to get the name of the pen…no luck. The Indian Reynolds site doesn’t list this pen at all…the French Reynolds site was under construction (and still is)…Anyway…I started using this pen and I was very pleased with its performance… It looked good in my shirt pocket, especially if you are wearing a light coloured shirt…the gold plated clip and bands gleam with glee!!! This FP is not available in other pen stores; you have to buy it from their showroom, which is called ‘Write Site’… and the Reynolds India site lists the locations in India… and I visited the Hyderabad Write Site recently to buy a similar pen for my friend on his birthday…I bought the brown one for him… he is mighty pleased…and it was after a couple of days later that I happened to read the payment receipt and noticed that this pen was listed as ‘Reynolds Ministere’… I again tried to cross verify on the web… no reference anywhere to this model name… I don’t know if this is the model name of this fountain pen…but, it writes well…and looks good…

And since Prasad’s is a place that we visit on and off, I was there a month back and ‘sneaked’ in to Write Site and bought the marbled brownish coloured FP…I was looking for the marbled blue, but it was not in stock…it is really stunning...

Jayasrinivasa Rao