Hari’s
post on Fountain Pen Network on the evolution of the Deccan Advocate in the last decade inspired me to
put together this post … a sort of companion post … I bought my first Advocate
in December 2007 and that was a fortuitous event for me as far as fountain pens
are concerned … I have been living in Hyderabad since 1992 and I remember
visiting Deccan Pens at Abids around 1995 or so in search of a fountain pen … I
had no idea about handmade Indian FPs, let alone pens made of ebonite and
celluloid … I vaguely remember seeing long black thick bodied pens under the
glass cases there … I didn’t even bother to ask the price of this pen, but
distinctly remember buying a plastic fountain pen, which could also be used
with a cartridge … after that it was in 2007 that I went again to Deccan Pens …
I called up before going and was pleasantly surprised to know that they had a
branch in Secunderabad too … and since it was on my way back home from college,
it was convenient too and so, I got down at Secunderabad and wended my way to
the shop … to cut things short, I saw the legendary black Advocate (I didn’t
know about the legendary status then…) and bought it without thinking … oh my
god, how good I felt … a pen should be like this, I thought … and since then, I
have bought many Advocates, and gifted many more … so, here is my Advocate
story … with pictures … a kind of photo essay …
The black Advocate seen here is the first Advocate that I bought … and the striated green one was bought in March 2008, along with a striated brown one (I subsequently gifted the brown one to a friend … I hope he is using it well … I don’t know … I will check and take it back if he is not using it…) … I had also bought a striated brown metal cap Advocate in March 2008 … the almost plain light brown seen here was bought sometime later, I don’t remember the exact month … possibly very late in 2008, I think …
The Advocate always had a steel band on the cap lip whenever I have seen it, till almost recently … and you can see that in this photo and also the ball clip … this clip and band were distinctive features till almost 2009 … and therefore I was surprised to see that Hari’s Advocates bought in 2004 did not have this cap band …
These two pictures show the feeders of the 2007-2008 Advocates … the feeder on the black Advocate is distinctively different and it had, as Hari says, “the feeders had an extra air channel/groove running underneath the feeder and also some extra fins hidden inside the section”… I never found it again in the full ebonite Advocates that I bought subsequently, except the striated brown metal capped Advocate … from then on it was the usual shaped feeders that we see on the Advocates … so, I feel this is a change that can be seen from 2007 to 2008 as far as full ebonite Advocates are concerned … also if you observe closely, the shape of the section has changed ever so slightly, the smooth curve seen in the black Advocate gives way to a slightly sharper cut …
This is the striated brown metal capped Advocate … the metal cap Advocate is a different thing altogether … Deccan made it with rounded ends as well as flat ends … I bought the one with rounded ends … in fact, it was after reading Hari’s post on the metal capped Advocate that I ran to Deccan at Secunderabad the same evening and bought it … Hari has both versions and I have always been eyeing the flat topped green metal capped Advocate, but never felt forced to buy it … here again, we see that old feeder … this feeder has never appeared again … and in the flat topped example that Hari shows, one can already see the tear drop clip, that would go on to be the stale clip for the next 5 years …
I put these two brown advocates to show the transition in the clip … the dark brown one has the new tear drop clip … the ball clip never to be seen again on the Advocate … I didn’t like this clip one bit, but I bought this dark brown Advocate to compensate for the earlier ball clip one that I gave my friend … the steel cap band is still very much there …
All right, these three black Advocates were customized at Hari’s behest by Deccan … Hari is not too fond of the cap band and had asked them to remove them for this particular order and as you can see, he had also asked them to reduce the length of the pens so that it becomes slightly more convenient to keep in one’s shirt pocket, but since Deccan already has a shorter and thinner Advocate Junior, they just customized these Advocates for Hari and continued with the earlier specifications for the regular Advocate … the long and the short one are mine, and the shortest pen is Hari’s …
I have already documented the latest avatar of the Advocate in the previous post and so, will not bring it here again … suffice to say that, the present Advocate is very very good compared to its previous version (that tear drop clip!) … the cap band is gone forever, I think and the new flat clip gets the look just right, I feel …
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Now, for the final
group photo of all the different versions of the Advocates that I have bought
from 2007 onwards till date … and remarkably, the nibs have remained the same …
the engineering remains the same and the writing experience is still very good …
