jaisiri: June 2013

Monday, June 3, 2013

Meeting Mr Lakshmana Rao of Guider Pens again…after a year and some more… Part 2 – The Guider White Acrylic Super Jumbo

Mr Lakshmana Rao showed me some more new creations...he had made new Jumbo models...some of you might remember the earlier Guider Jumbo...it was a black ebonite behemoth...ha ha ha (in case you don’t, here it is again)...but obviously, Mr Lakshmana Rao wanted to excel himself this time...and this time, there is a change in material too...the new bigger Jumbo is called the Super Jumbo...and it is in White Acrylic...as I had written earlier, Mr Lakshmana Rao had sent me photos of this Super Jumbo and I was smitten...and here I was sitting in front of the maker of this pen and holding the pen in my hands...I just couldn’t bear to keep the pen back in its box... Mr Lakshmana Rao obviously saw the gleam and longing in my eyes...

The pen is just marble white in colour...nice clean smooth lines...a black cap jewel and a steel arrow clip...just the kind of clip that would look good on this pen...and everything looked well fitted...I looked at the nib...it was not bespoke, but customised with ‘GUIDER FINE INDIA’ in three lines pressed on it and below this is a G inside a circle...the proof of the nib is in the writing, I said to myself...there was no ink there for me to try and test the smoothness of the nib...

The pen is really huge...I thought about the earlier black ebonite jumbo and imagined it to be of the same size as this one...mind plays tricks, doesn’t it? I mentioned this to Mr Lakshmana Rao and he assured me that the black ebonite jumbo is much smaller that this one and that this is the biggest pen he has created so far and he also said that he is considering sending details of this pen to one of those books of records to be considered for the ‘biggest pen’...anyway...that is another story...

I told Mr Lakshmana Rao that I wanted this white pen and he told me that since I had expressed my desire as soon as I saw the photos earlier, he would be happy to give me one...and the most interesting part is, he said he had made only two in White Acrylic and that I would be the first user of this new model... I really felt privileged...not only did I have a preview of this pen, I also got to own one of the first two pieces of this fabulous looking pen...

I just couldn’t wait to reach home and ink it up...somewhere I had this feeling that because of the translucency of the white acrylic, the barrel might darken as soon as I ‘filled’ it with ink...so I first wanted to take photos of the pen un-inked...after I took the pictures, I inked it...to be precise, I was actually able to ‘pour’ the ink into the barrel straight from the bottle!!! The mouth of the barrel is that wide...and the barrel did indeed darken...

And I finally ventured to write with this new pen... I was very pleased to see that the nib was smooth and the flow was even and the line was ‘fine leaning towards medium’...and a nice wet line... I was very happy...and now for the long term flow...

Most of the times, I write my blog posts I a diary and then type it out...gives me a chance to write with my fountain pens... I took this pen and started writing in my diary...the narrative of my meeting with Mr Lakshmana Rao (the previous Part 1 post)...and I just wrote on and on... I wrote close to eleven pages continuously to finish the first draft of that post!! The flow is superb...and the nib is smooth with a slight hint of tooth at a particular angle, which I like because that gives some grip... this post too I wrote with the Super Jumbo...close to eight pages continuously...no finger fatigue at holding the thick section...no wrist pain at holding the thick pen... the pen rests comfortably between the thumb and forefinger... I am not much of a post-er, but I did post and write...but un-posted is most comfortable for me...

Now for the vital statistics...the pen is 6 ½ inches capped; 5 ¾ inches uncapped and 7 ½ inches posted...and, the diameter of the barrel, measured just below the section, is 20.68 mm (my friend and colleague, Pavan, who teaches mathematics in our college, helped me with the formula [2πr = circumference] to find the diameter; and I also measured the thickness of the barrel with a screw gauge borrowed from the physics department...) ... really Super Jumbo...

I then thought why not compare sizes with the black jumbo which I had...only when I took out the black jumbo from its box did I realise how ‘impoverished’ it looked in comparison...ha ha ha...at that time, I had called the black jumbo the ‘Jumbo XXL!!!’ and had thought no pen could be bigger than the black ebonite jumbo...

Mr Lakshmana Rao never ceases to surprise...