Deccan Retro Series Fountain Pen - A new FP model from Deccan Pens, Hyderabad

This time I am showcasing a new model by Deccan Pens, Hyderabad…called the Deccan Retro series by them… Made of ebonite, it is light brown in colour with prominent black streaks, a natural design that ebonite lends itself to. It was very difficult to capture the pen in its right colour while photographing as the light brown would turn into dark brown in the photos and the first photo is one of the three photos that show the pen in its correct colour. The rest of the photos that follow that show the pen as dark brown…the photos are sharper though and the pen looks beautiful in dark brown too…

The pen is an ED filler and pen connoisseurs would recognize many influences on the design of this pen…the flat conical cap and the ball clip reminds us of Bexley’s ‘America is Beautiful’ model (as noticed by my friend Hari), Montegrappa Extra 1930 model, and some Eversharp models as well…the distinctive feature of this pen is the curve at the cap lip, not a straight horizontal cut…Deccan Pens have fitted this pen with a Swan Oxford fine tipped nib… the line is slightly finer that I normally would have liked, but the ink flows well and writing is a pleasure… I filled it with Chelpark turquoise ink and didn’t like it at all, mostly because the ink itself was light…I emptied the barrel and refilled it with Camlin Royal Blue and it writes like a dream now… and as always with Deccan Pens (IMHO&E), no starting problems… and for the statistically minded, the pen is approx 5 ½ inches capped, 6 ¼ inches posted, and 5 inches uncapped…

As I had mentioned in one of my earlier posts on Deccan Pens, when you see a new Deccan model, pick it up immediately, because it might just not be there the next time as all new models are made as limited editions initially…and they are all handmade, so the pen-maker himself has to make these pens…there is no assembly line process here…and this pen was no exception…but one of the second generation brothers alerted me when this model was being made and I told him to keep aside two for me…one for my use and another for my friend Hari…

Thanks for watching...

Going to Botswana - Reading Alexander McCall Smith's The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series

Some time back I got heavily into reading crime fiction… I like reading general pulp fiction, but ‘pure’ crime fiction was something I started reading seriously only recently…my friend Vinod was instrumental in introducing me to Elmore Leonard’s novels, and now I am a confirmed fan…I bought a couple of Indian crime fiction novels (The Englishman’s Cameo, The Curious Case of 221B) and liked reading them…Ian Rankin was in India recently and his interviews with a couple of ‘powerful’ people appeared in newspapers here and I was intrigued…I hadn’t read any of his novels…and as luck would have it when Best Books put up their next exhibition at YMCA Secunderabad, I managed to get the first novel in the Inspector Rebus series, Knots and Crosses…and I also got about 5 more Elmore Leonard novels…and in between all these I read Stieg Larsson’s Millennium Trilogy (highly recommended!!!) … and so, I was hooked…and wanted to read other writers of similar ‘criminal’ persuasions…the name Alexander McCall Smith also came up while searching for crime fiction authors and the search said that he had written a series of crime novels set in Botswana…starting with The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency … I thought I’d give the first one a try … and as luck would have it, I was in Bangalore some months back and there is this mall near my brother-in-law’s house which had a bookstore called Depot … I was delighted to find that all books there are being sold at 50% discount … something like a stock clearance sale … I went in and saw The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency on the rack and decided to pick it up…and then I saw two other books in the same series…Tears of the Giraffe and The Kalahari Typing School for Men…the discount being offered tempted me and I bought all the three…

I started reading the first one … I thought it’d be a tough cloak and dagger high adrenaline hide and seek between detective and criminal…and I was surprised...nothing of that kind…if at all one can use the word ‘gentle’ for a crime fiction novel…it should be used for this…it tells the story of Precious Ramotswe, who sets up a detective agency in Gabarone, the capital of Botswana … Precious Ramotswe tells her story of how she decided to set up the detective agency (the first in Botswana, mind you) and what attracted her to this profession … and a lot about traditional Botswanian way of life, their morals, and how these things are slowly changing…She says she loves Botswana and she loves Africa and wants to do something to solve the little problems that people have to make them live easier…how her father was one of the most upright and good persons who followed the traditional way of life and taught her the positive values … her failed marriage to a musician … and all these constitute the major portion of the first novel … and the initial skepticism among the local people about how a woman could fancy herself to be a detective and whether she could solve any problems at all … the cases she gets initially are ‘simple’ in nature, cheating husbands, car thefts, petty crime…and she solves them…and in the subsequent novels, the crime scene does get grittier, and slightly more dangerous than in the previous cases…

But most interesting are the people that inhabit her world…the kind and gentle Mr J L B Matekoni, mechanic and owner of Speedy Motors, B K, the beautician who owns the Last Chance Hair Salon, Grace Makutsi, the nervous and worried secretary of the Detective Agency, who has the distinction of scoring 97% marks (the highest in the history of the country) in her Diploma offered by the Botswana Secretarial College, and who also always laments that despite her distinction she was never offered any jobs at offices because she did not look or behave like many other young girls…Cephas Buthelezi (who grandly calls himself Ex-CID, Ex-New York, Ex-cellent!!), who sets up a rival detective agency, Satisfaction Guaranteed Detective Agency…Note Mokoti, the jazz trumpeter, who marries Precious Ramotswe and then abuses her physically and from whom she separates…”Two Shots” Pulani, the local impresario, who organizes the Botswana Beauty and Integrity contest…and many many more…

I did not realize that I enjoyed reading the novel…no crime would be reported to the police because Precious Ramotswe believed in solving problems and allowing people to realize their wrongdoings and sort out the emotional fallouts themselves… soon I was reading the second and the third novels … and wanting more … and sure enough, when I visited Bangalore, I visited Depot again, and happily for me, I found two more novels of the series which were not there when I visited it first…Morality for Beautiful Girls and In the Company of Cheerful Ladies…and finished them soon enough…

Above all, Precious Ramotswe takes us on a tour of modern Botswana and one begins to almost smell the soil and become part of Precious Ramotswe’s world…go, read them and Enjoyment Guaranteed…

Swarna 'Sumo' and other Swarnas

The pattern on the barrel

All Swarna fountain pens

The cap

The whole pen...

Continuing with my explorations for handmade fountain pens from the state of Andhra Pradesh in India, I came across the SWARNA brand of ebonite fountain pens…this was an unexpected lead given to me by my colleague, who I had infected with the FP virus. He had gone hunting pens in his hometown and hit upon a stationery shop which stocked these pens. He called me while still in the shop and told me about the pens and asked me whether I’d like to have them in my collection. The proprietor then took over and then I had a chat with him and decided to buy a set of whatever he had in all colours. After I had started collecting and using ebonite FPs, I had seen that ebonite FPs came in many designs and styles and sizes and colour variations. And true to form, the SWARNA pens that I received after a week were all different from the ones I had (i.e., Ratnam, Guider, Deccan, Prasad, and other smaller brands), but the biggest surprise was the biggest one in the gang. The object of my penfection here is the big ebonite ED filler pen from SWARNA. This pen did not have any name and I decided to call it the SWARNA SUMO…it is a solid looking pen, worth being mentioned along with the ebonite greats of AP...the pen has a very unusually shaped cap...we have all seen tapering down caps, but this cap has a completely black cap jewel...I think a separate part...not part of the swirling mottled brown ebonite body...and I think (again), for this reason, the pen maker decided to have a separate black part at the bottom too, to seal the barrel...normally the barrels of ebonite pens are stand alone single pieces, because ebonite for pens is available as rods and the rods are hollowed to make the caps and barrels...so, this design here is unconventional...the natural swirl pattern on the cap is really nice...and that is the beauty of ebonite pens...no two pens are alike in terms of colour patterns, whether mottled green or mottled brown...