Mr Lakshmana Rao, over the last few weeks, has been
very active and busy, and has been sending me photographs of the new models
that he had designed and created…I could see that this time he was
concentrating on acrylic and the pens in various swirling hues were indeed
eye-catching…
Apart from the spinning and whirling colours…blue…red…amber…gray…
yellow…I could also see that he had made a huge pen in all-white acrylic and
another, slightly smaller, in all-red acrylic…I was fascinated by the big white
and the big red and called Mr Lakshmana Rao in Rajahmundry and asked him how
much they cost and of he could send them across…then he told me he’d be
visiting Hyderabad shortly and that he’d be bringing his new models along with
him and that I could see then, try them, and then decide…and I got a call from
him on Saturday, 25 May 2013, asking me when I’d be free, so that we could meet…he
could’ve just informed me that he is in Hyderabad and that I can meet him
during this time period on this particular day…such is the humility of Mr Lakshmana
Rao…I was feeling a bit sheepish…and told him that I’d be glad to meet him on Monday,
27 May, in the evening…
I had spent a memorable evening with Mr Lakshmana
Rao more than a year back listening to pen tales and I had also written about it
here…this time too we planned to meet at his son’s house, which is a
short distance away from my house…
Mr Lakshmana Rao was staying with his daughter in
another part of Hyderabad and he had to come from there to his son’s house…it
took some time for him to reach and I was waiting in front of the apartment block. Again, I was amazed to see how this “one of a
kind of man” (especially for fountain pen enthusiasts), is without any airs…he
was carrying a big bag with pen boxes and folders inside, as he got down from
the city bus…the same simple dress…and on top of that he apologized for being
late…!!!
We went up to his son’s flat…it was locked and he
opened it and the flat was bare…the last time I was there with him, the flat
was furnished…now there were only a couple of plastic chairs and we sat on them
and started talking and slowly he started taking out the boxes and showing me
the recent models…this time he talked mostly about the new models…
He took out a box and showed me a colourful array
of short pens…he said he had made this model for a particular customer who had
seen the acrylic ‘Baby’ models on the Guider website and wanted something
similar, but longer than the ‘Baby’…since there was no existing model of the
intermediate size, the customer himself suggested the name ‘Kid’ for the new
proposed model…so, Mr Lakshmana Rao says he set down to work…he says he tried
using existing acrylic material and cutting them to the new required size, but
somehow it wouldn’t work and he was not able to get the barrel and cap to synchronize…and
he didn’t want to abandon the attempt because, he said, the customer has come
to me because I have advertised that I make customized pens, and he has asked
me to make a particular kind of model…I am a pen maker and I will not
disappoint my customer…whatever the cost, I will make this model…
Mr Lakshmana Rao then decided to get a new die made
to cast for this new model, though this meant unforeseen expenditure…he was
finally able to get the size and shape right…but there was another problem…he
had some beautiful acrylic in wonderful swirling colours and shades, but some
of them were not sufficient for even one full ‘Kid’ pen…and as you can see in
these two photographs below, only three pens were possible in full acrylic,
i.e., both cap & body…amber…dark blue…and light blue…the rest of the ‘Kids’
have black ebonite caps, though the cap jewel and clip are of the same design…and
if you look closely, the colours are delicious…the dark blue…the lovely golden
amber…the veined marble light gray…the lovely swirly brown…and that ‘wow’
yellow…that gray veined black…the gorgeous red…that chaotic marbled gray at the
extreme end…that deep darkish amber…I fell in love with the colours…maybe, only
acrylic can lend itself to giving out so many tints and tones…and those swirls
and whorls…like twirling ballerinas and whirling dervishes…colourfully chaotic…
