This visit was almost a year ago.
We had visited Chennai during the close of the Ganapati festival to meet
my brother, Mahesh, Shubha, his wife, and Teju, their son and, er … also to
escape the ear-shattering, mind-numbing, and head-pounding din of the Ganapati
immersion festivities in Hyderabad. We
were there for three days. I did not
have any specific plan as such and went along with whatever Mahesh and Shubha
had in mind. On the day before we left
Chennai, we were sitting around and chatting and I felt I should visit Gem
& Co. I have been using their
fountain pens, had corresponded with Mr Pratap, its genial proprietor, and I
have come so far and I would surely regret if I didn’t visit their shop. I tentatively asked Mahesh if he could go
along with me to Gem & Co., as I did not know my way around. As we did not have any specific plans for the
evening, Mahesh agreed to chaperone me to the shop.
Gem & Co. is located in the bustling Parry’s Corner area in Chennai
and they have been selling and making pens for the last 80 years or so. Gem & Co. is among the oldest pen sellers
and more importantly, pen makers, in India.
My friend, Hari, has written about the history of this iconic pen shop
and his visits to the shop on fountain pen network. So, I will take a few sentences from his posts
on FPN … “Mr. Pratap Kumar is
the owner of this establishment. He is
the grandson of Mr. M.C. Cunnan who started this store, and till a few years
back the shop was being managed by Mr. Pratap's father Mr. M. Prabhat Kumar. Gem and Company have an illustrious past as
one of the largest pen stores in the south of India and were representing major
brands of the day like Pelikan, Parker and Sheaffer. They were also the
authorised repair center for these brands and still hold a huge inventory of
spare parts including parts for vintage Mont Blanc pens. They were also the
main dealers for the Madras based Pilot pen company and their own brand the
GAMA pen. GAMA is a pen brand in existence from the 1940s in South
India. In the past they had a
nice line of Gold nibbed models such as the Gama Kid, Gama Coronation, Gama Manifold and the Gama Royal. In
addition to pocket pens, from time to time they also made some hand turned
acrylic desk pens in really limited numbers. The shop has been re-laid now, and I
remember in the past when they had still kept installed wooden Pelikan pen
display cases. Gem and company deals exclusively in pens, ball pens, inks and
refills only and carry no other stationery items.”
My brother and I entered Gem
& Co. and, I am sure every fountain pen geek would understand this, it was
like being transported to a pen heaven.
It is all pens everywhere.
Despite being re-laid in the recent past, the shop still looks like it
is wrapped in time. It reminded me of
the shop that sold magic wands in Diagon Alley.
You could see those cardboard boxes arranged on top of each other on the
far shelf and also in the room inside.
This is the first impression you get when you enter the shop.
This is how Gem & Co. looks from the street ...
That's Mr Pratap (in the greenish t-shirt) conversing with Mahesh (in the blue shirt) ... and one of the assistants (in the white shirt) ...
Pens ... Pens ... everywhere ...
On this shelf ... on that shelf ...
You can see the blue-black, red-black, purple-black, and white-black acrylic fountain pens in the glass case ...
The Gama Jumbo ebonite fountain pens ... the shiny black and the brushed black ... you can also see the Gama Demonstrator (transparent acrylic) model in the centre ...
More Gama ebonite fountain pens ... striated green and striated brown Gama Jumbos ...
The inside room ... more boxes ... god knows what treasures are stocked inside ...
Those cardboard boxes with pens inside ... oh, I want to see what's inside these boxes ...
A pen repair in progress ...
There is more to come ... just hang on ...
No comments:
Post a Comment