HEMA FOUNTAIN PENS from HYDERBAD

Continuing my quest for fountain pens from Andhra Pradesh & Telangana…

I had heard about Hema fountain pens or rather, I had seen the name of Hema Pen Company on the net while browsing for information on fountain pens in Hyderabad, but I understood that they no longer manufacture fountain pens and there is Hema Pen Stores, also in Hyderabad, and when I called them to find out about fountain pens, they told me that they don’t sell fountain pens anymore and only sell general stationery…

But I instinctively felt that there are Hema fountain pens out there and it is only a matter of time before luck smiled on me…and luck did indeed smile on me and in the most unexpected of places … right in my neighbourhood, in a small stationery shop… I go with the intention of asking in small stationery shops about fountain pens but most of the times, I stop short and come back without asking…and most of the times that I have stopped and asked, I have been rewarded and how!!  I had found a whole set of Misak Pens in a dusty folder in a small shop in Hyderabad when I had stopped and asked… and again when I stopped and asked in this stationery shop near my house, the owner rummaged around in the bottom of his cupboard and came up with an old cardboard box which contained two Hema ebonite fountain pens…I only have to overcome my diffidence…!!

Here are the pictures of these two lovely looking ebonite fountain pens…

Hema FPs capped…the pens have nice flat ends…

Caps & Clips…nice flat clips…

Brand name on the barrel…

Hema FPs uncapped…

Hema FPs posted…posts well…

The nibs…I feel these are nibs customized for the Hema brand…in one, you can see the brand name HEMA with SWISS POINT along with some decorative etchings…and when I pulled out the nib, below all these, I saw the letters H.P.C. etched inside an oval …the letters presumably standing for Hema Pen Company…the other nib doesn’t have the brand name, and instead of SWISS POINT, we have SWISS ELECTRO POINT along with a kind of three point star and two small circles etched on the face of the nib…and again, below all these, I saw the letters B.P.D. etched inside an oval…I wonder what the letters stand for…and it was kind of refreshing to see SWISS instead of the ubiquitous GERMANY that one sees very often on Indian ebonite pens… 

The feeders…plain ones…

At present I don’t have any information about the manufacturer/s as such, which would have added some history to the brand…for the time being, we have to make do with pictures…!!!

As in the case of so many small fountain pen making units in Andhra Pradesh & Telangana that have closed shop, Hema pens too are no longer being made… so, for me finding these two Hema Fountain Pens was delightful and added to my collection of fountain pens from Andhra Pradesh & Telangana…

These are simple no-frills pens, but they form a part of the history of fountain pens in Andhra Pradesh & Telangana…and India…

And the search continues…

Fountain Pens of Andhra Pradesh – Asoka Fountain Pens from Tenali

It was in the latter half of 2007 that I got introduced to handmade Indian ebonite fountain pens and gradually learnt about the various handmade fountain pen brands and manufacturers in Andhra Pradesh.  All of a sudden I was afflicted with fountainpenitis and after that for the next couple of years I was in a kind of frenzy.  I learnt about fountain pens made in places like Rajahmundry, Warangal, Tenali, Vijayawada, Guntur, Machilipatnam, and around two or three in Hyderabad.  Then on I made it my mission to track down and own at least a couple of samples of each of these brands.  Hyderabad and Rajahmundry were easy, mainly because the brands were still in existence…Deccan, Ratnam, Ratnamson, & Guider.  What proved to be very difficult was the brands from places like Tenali, Guntur, Vijayawada, Warangal, etc.  I used to hound and harass my friends and colleagues for information.  Through this process of cajoling and my own stubbornness, I managed to track down and find and finally own brands like Prasad, Merlin, Swarna, Brahmam, & Sandeep.  Asoka from Tenali was eluding me and through a colleague I managed to gain a foothold in Tenali … and I got within sniffing distance of owning an Asoka fountain pen, but alas …

Here is the initial part of my post on Prasad Pens (written in November 2008) which narrates my initial foray into the world of fountain pens from Tenali …

(I thought the name was spelt ‘Ashoka,’ but realized recently that it is ‘Asoka’)

--- FLASHBACK ALERT ---  FLASHBACK ALERT ---

It was a PM by Hari in my mail box on Fountain Pen Network that sent me on this hunt. In the PM, he sent me a URL which mentioned the name of a pen brand in Andhra Pradesh called Ashoka Pens based in a town called Tenali. I enquired at the pen shops in Hyderabad and none of them had this pen and most of them hadn’t even heard of this brand. I then decided to take another route. I teach in a college in Hyderabad and a fair number of my colleagues are from other small and large towns in Andhra Pradesh who have gravitated to the capital city. After numerous enquiries, I discovered that a member of our library staff is from Tenali. When I asked her if she knew anything about Ashoka Pens, she gave me a blank look and then told me that she had left Tenali long years ago and had settled in Hyderabad and that she’d call up and ask her uncle, who lives in Tenali.

After a couple of days, she gave a phone number and told me that her uncle had managed to get in touch with the proprietor of Ashoka Pens and asked me to call the number and speak to the proprietor. I spoke to him the same day and the news was not so good. He told me that he had closed down his pen manufacturing unit almost 6 years back and had sold away all his machinery and stock. He said his pen manufacturing unit couldn’t withstand the ballpoint pen revolution and since it was a small scale industry, almost like a cottage industry, it couldn’t sustain prolonged sluggishness in business. I felt very sad and asked him if he had at least a couple of FPs for my collection and for posterity. He said that even he doesn’t have a sample of the pens manufactured by him and that his friend had taken away the lone FP he had. I continued the talk for a little while more, prodding his memory in the hope that he’d remember some forgotten cache where he had stowed away some pens. No such luck. 

---  FLASHBACK OVER ---

--- BACK TO THE PRESENT ---

But I must say that though I did not get any Asoka pens at that time, the once-owner of Asoka pens put me in touch with the owner of Prasad pens and that’s how I managed to get hold of Prasad fountain pens … it is all in there in my 3-part post on Prasad pens (November 2008) … go on…take a look…here are the links …

http://www.jaisiri.blogspot.in/2008/11/fountain-pens-of-ap-prasad-pens-part-1.html

http://www.jaisiri.blogspot.in/2008/11/fountain-pens-of-ap-prasad-pens-part-2.html

http://www.jaisiri.blogspot.in/2008/11/fountain-pens-of-ap-prasad-pens-part-3.html

After this touch and go, I kind of gave up hope of owning an Asoka pen … but I didn’t stop talking or thinking about it … Hari and I would discuss this on and off and of course, whenever I used to speak with Mr Lakshmana Rao of Guider Pens, Rajahmundry, other Andhra Pradesh-based fountain pen brands and their current state would invariably feature in our conversations.  I used to tell him about the different brands that I managed to find and those that I was still searching for and Asoka was one of the brands that I told him about.  I lamented that I got as far as meeting the owner, but could not get any pens.  And when I met Mr Lakshmana Rao again last year in May, he sprang a delightful surprise … after all the discussions about the new Guider models that he had showed me…all those new acrylic Jumbos and Kids… and as I was leaving, he gave me two ebonite pens and told me that these were for my collection … I saw the pens and was kind of became speechless for some time … these two were Asoka fountain pens … pens that I had been hunting for since 2008 … Mr Lakshmana Rao told me that he had them in his random collection of pens, but since he felt that I was so passionate about fountain pens from Andhra Pradesh and valued them more and moreover, would document them, he thought these pens deserved to be in my collection … it was such a spontaneous and magnanimous gesture from Mr Lakshmana Rao that I could only offer him my heartfelt gratitude …

At long last, here are the two Asoka fountain pens … 

These are simple ED filler fountain pens, but for me the historical value of these pens is much more significant … let’s look at the pens … 

I liked these pens at first sight … they had my favourite ball clip and flat top and end … these were enough for me to get going with …

Both Asokas posted ...

The branding on the clips ... in fact, the branding is seen almost everywhere on the pen ... here, it is on the clips ... 

Branding on the barrel with the name of the place of origin ... 

The nibs ...  it says Asoka Executive Tipped ... maybe there is Fine below Tipped ... I haven't taken out the nibs yet ... 

The feeders ... looks like the feeder maker didn't get the spelling right ... 

So, finally, I managed to get Asoka pens into my collection and it is all thanks to Mr Lakshmana Rao ... thank you, sir ... 

I do hope you liked what you saw and read ... 

Regards,

Jai

In search of the nostalgic MISAK Fountain Pen (in Hyderabad, India)...PART 3...Hari's Misaks

This is Part 3 of the Misak series…a kind of guest post…text and photos contributed by my friend Hari Balakrishna…

I had posted both parts of my search for Misak pens as one post on Fountain Pen Network along with the photos…and my Hari…a fellow fountain pen and watch enthusiast and fellow FNPer had written an enthusiastic response to my post and also posted photos of the Misak pens he had acquired…I thought his photos of his pens would give a sense of completeness to this present series on Misak pens…I asked his permission to have them on my blog and he agreed enthusiastically to this idea... so…here are the photos of Hari’s Misaks with the description in his own words…

Jai,

Thank you for taking the time to finally document the legendary Hyderabadi Misak pens.  Very little is known about them other than what you have so nicely presented. 

I own 4 Misaks. Here are some pictures:

The very first one that I bought from the now untraceable shop on RP road...

The same pen...uncapped...

Misak (Regd) stamped faintly on the barrel, hope I have been able to capture it adequately...

A Group photo of the others, the second one is courtesy you, thanks! The last two were kindly sent to me by another generous Hyderabadi FPNer whose FPN handle is anup.singh in Feb2010 that he had found in a shop at "Chandanagar” close to BHEL Township in Hyderabad for a princely sum of 15 Rupees each!!

Both 'Chandanagar' Misaks...uncapped...

The nibs are quite worn, but these are Misak branded nibs, also the clips have Misak on them...

Thank you Hari for your warm response to my post on FPN and the beautiful photos of your Misaks...it was a pleasure having you as a guest on my blog...

In search of the nostalgic MISAK Fountain Pen (in Hyderabad, India)...PART 2

This was truly unreal...I had to hide my excitement... I tried to look nonchalant... I opened the caps one by one...the first FP had a gold band on the cap...the nib had Misak on it...wonderful...the second one had no cap band... this nib also had Misak on it...more wonderful...the third one with the arrow clip turned out to be a ball pen with an ‘ancient’ looking refill still in it...no harm... it is always nice to have a complete range of a pen brand, if possible...in fact, I did not want to leave any Misak behind...I then asked him some general questions about the Misak brand...he said it was a very popular brand in Hyderabad at one point of time and of course now it is closed and the owner has migrated to the US or Dubai, he was not sure... very casually, I asked him the price of these 3 pens...by now I think he realised that I was hooked...and told me that he is offering me these pens at cost price, although these are now antique pieces...and he can ask for more...I just smiled...and he offered me each pen at cost price...which was fabulous...

Now I had 3 Misaks...two FPs with custom Misak nibs, something I was searching for...the ball-pen added variety...and there was a tremendous sense of satisfaction...as if I had made the pens myself...

What is special about these pens? Nothing much...they are simple looking ebonite FPs with no frills or fuss...but for a whole generation of Hyderabadis...Misak meant ‘fountain pens’... 

And this happened around a year ago and I had wanted to write about my search and post pictures of my Misaks...and it never seemed to happen...a couple of weeks ago, I finally decided to create my Misak post...and as some kind of preparatory work, wanted to see if I can get some information on the Internet (though I have scoured the net many times earlier in search of information on Misak...)...and I found a piece of conversation (in a Hyderabadi forum chat) between two Hyderabadis...one living in Chicago and the other in Hyderabad...I have not mentioned their names here for obvious reasons...

The Hyderabadi living in Chicago writes in a nostalgic mood (in English transcribed Urdu) about how in the 1960s there was a shop in Putli Bawli called the Misak Pen Store and the pens sold here were inexpensive...Mr Kasim Husain was the owner of this pen store and that the name of pen was the reverse of his name...KASIM...MISAK...and because the pens were inexpensive, they were very popular and the owner used to repair pens for free in his shop...now I think the shop is closed...

The one in Hyderabad responds to this and writes in English that Misak Pens were popular in his school too... and that he was thankful for some of the useful details supplied by his compatriot in Chicago...he goes on to write that some samples of Misak could still be available in one of the book shops in Charminar area and that he wanted to buy one and keep it as a collectible... but had forgotten...and now this nostalgic reminiscence from Chicago has refreshed his memory and he offers to buy one and send it across to Chicago as a gift...

Well...after this very long narrative...here are the pictures...

The ‘original’ Misaks...2 FPs and 1 ball-pen...

This is the FP with Misak only on the clip...

Misak 1 – The one with the broad gold band on the cap...

The clip of the same pen...

Aha...the nib...with Misak on it...

Cap and nib

The Misak without the Misak nib...

Yeah...it has got an Ambitious nib...

This picture is lovely...the name is etched very cleanly on the clip...

Misak 2 – the one without the cap band..

Misak 2 - clip with brand name...

The Misak ball-pen...

The arrow clip with Misak on it...

The ancient looking refill...I bought this pen just for that...

Thanks for all the patience...I hope you liked reading this as much as I enjoyed recounting this search...

Ok...here endeth Part 2 (with photos) as promised in Part 1...but there is a surprise...there is going to be another post on Misak...a kind of Part 3...this is going to be a guest post...'soon' is all I can say to 'when?'

In search of the nostalgic MISAK Fountain Pen (in Hyderabad, India)...PART 1

For old-timers in Hyderabad (India), ‘Misak Pens’ is a major nostalgia item among many other things Hyderabadi...this I came to know during my visits to Deccan Pen Stores when on more than one occasion a customer would come in asking for Misak Pen (and added ‘patte-wala’ pen, meaning ‘pen with nib,’ ‘patta’ being the local and/or traditional Hindi/Urdu word for ‘nib’), and the salesperson would pick out an ebonite fountain pen (a smaller sized brown mottled ebonite Deccan FP) and give it to him...and that person would go nostalgic and say things like ‘in those days we used to write with Misak Pens, and nowadays the pen is not easily available’... and surprisingly he would pay for the pen and take it...I didn’t know whether the customer knew that he was buying a Deccan FP...or whether he bothered about it at all...after a couple of such occasions, especially at the DPS Secunderabad branch, I realised that for the customer ‘Misak Pen’ meant an ‘ebonite pen,’ especially the brown mottled variety...and finding a brown mottled ebonite FP in a shop in Hyderabad itself was a big deal for the customer, which took him back to ‘uss zamana’ (those days)...

My own interest in procuring at least one Misak FP for my collection started with my friend and fellow FPNer, Hari’s response to one of the posts on Indian FPs on FPN...who informed me that he had managed to buy a couple of Misak FPs (probably the last pieces in that shop) from a shop somewhere near DPS Secunderabad and he had also mentioned the name of the shop (Gupta Pen Stores)...so, one evening, I went around that area looking for Gupta Pen Stores and found none...there was another pen shop nearby and I enquired there and the husband and wife duo (owners presumably) there told me that they no longer have any ebonite pens to sell, let alone a Misak FP...I went to DPS Secunderabad and asked them about the shop...Zubair tried to remember and told me that there is no such shop in the vicinity and there could be a shop similarly named somewhere in the older part of the city... I was disappointed...I asked Hari and he confirmed the name of the shop and the location...maybe I missed it...

Hari is the main source of information on FPs for me and he told me that he had also tried to find out about Misak Pens on the internet and found an address in Hyderabad where the Misak Pens shop/manufacturing unit is located...a place called Chappal Bazar...he promptly wrote a letter to the owner asking him about the brand and if they had any stocks left, but disappointingly and unfortunately the letter came back with ‘addressee not found’ scrawled on the cover...

Hari had also informed me that he had got to know that the brand name ‘MISAK’ is actually the name of the owner written in reverse...KASIM...maybe the Deccan people told him this... and he was also informed that Misak Pens is closed now and no more Misaks are being made...

The search for Misak was getting more and more disappointing...at that point in time, I used to enquire at every suitably old looking stationery shop for Misak pens...and the generally common answer I’d get was a nostalgic one tinged with regret...‘arre saab, Hyderabad mein bahut chalta tha Misak Pena-n...bandh ho gaya ab...koi bhi patte ka pen istemaal nahin karrein...’ (oh sir, Misak pens used to be very popular in Hyderabad...it is closed now...nobody uses ‘nib’ pens anymore...)

The night has to end sometime...and that daybreak happened one innocuous day when on my rounds checking old looking stationery shops, I found a really shabby looking shop in a very busy general shopping area...all kinds of note books, ledger books, cardboard boxes, stationery boxes, paper sheets, stacked here and there...it looked like an angry bull had entered the shop... I asked the man at the counter if he had any fountain pens...he showed me some cheap plastic ones...I asked for ebonite FPs...and he brought out a cardboard pen box and showed me some ebonite pens...I read the name on the clip...MISAK...oh man oh man oh man... I forgave the shop for looking so shabby...only if more shops were shabby, but held old treasures...well, I am getting ahead of myself here...he had some 6 similar looking thick mottled brown ebonite pens with the name MISAK on the clip...I opened the cap and looked at the nib... disappointment... not a Misak nib...the immediate conclusion was ‘not an original Misak’... I asked the person about the pen and asked him if these were new...he said they were new pens...I then told him that I had heard that Misak had closed shop long back... ‘yes, indeed,’ he said... ‘but one of my customers is based in the US and had asked me to locate some Misak pens for him...I managed to locate somebody in the family and they made me a small batch of FPs...and these 6 are the last ones...’ I didn’t want to ask any further questions... I checked all the 6 pens for nib smoothness and bought 4...at least the clip has MISAK on it...some consolation...

But as you can see, I was not satisfied...the soul of the pen was missing...and it was a kind of a reminder...‘your search doesn’t endeth here’... I left it at that... no point in running after a mirage...or a misak...for that matter...

It was not that easy, you see, to dismiss Misak totally out of my mind...though the spirit was willing, the flesh was weak and so the intensity got dimmed a bit... and all this was happening around two and a half years ago... and one evening I was in an auto-rickshaw travelling towards the older part of the city...the driver was somebody whom I engaged regularly for my book and pen explorations around the city and he knew my regular shops and my strange hobbies...there is this stationery shop which looked old enough and I had always wanted to stop and ask if they had any FPs...and moreover, the board had ‘Pen’ and Stationery on it, so that gave me some more hope...so on this day, I asked my driver to stop near the shop...there was a middle-aged gentleman manning the shop and I asked him if he had any FPs...he gave me the familiar nostalgia-laden answer...I asked him if he had any ebonite FPs from the olden days...he said ‘no’... and then he stopped himself for a second and said ‘let me see’...aha... a sliver of light seemed to appear at the end of the tunnel...I waited with bated breath...he seemed to be searching for something and seemed to have found it and came up with a dusty plastic pen folder...he then dusted it with a cloth...suspense was killing me...arre, clean it later, na...he then unzipped the folder and there were 4 pens there...3 of them mottled brown ebonite pens... he handed me the pens... did my heart skip a beat?...ALL THREE BROWN MOTTLED EBONITES WERE MISAKs...

(The rest of the narrative and pictures in the next and last part...)

Meeting a Legend – An evening with Mr Lakshmana Rao of Guider Pens, Rajahmundry, AP, India

I got this pleasant opportunity to meet one of the legends of the hand-made fountain pens manufacturing in India…Mr G. Lakshmana Rao of Guider Pens, Rajahmundry. He had come to Hyderabad to visit his son and daughter and it was in his son’s house that we met. He had called me before coming to Hyderabad and said he’d be there for a few days and I was very pleased at his humility and jumped at the opportunity to meet him. We met on a pleasant evening on 29th April and he took me on a whirlwind tour of his experiences in this trade…which I think began in the 1960s. He has almost 50 years’ experience and expertise in making fountain pens and has seen the heydays of handmade FPs in India. An easygoing man with a great passion for fountain pens, Mr Lakshmana Rao is a fund of stories and I didn’t know how time flew by listening to his anecdotes. He had brought with him some of his recent creations, especially the really huge ‘Zimbo,’ and the really tiny 1 ½ inch ‘Mini.’ He had also brought samples of some really old pens… an old mandarin yellow Varsity pen that he is restructuring…a couple of old Sheaffer bodies…and many more…
Mr Lakshmana Rao with a Guider cream 7 blue acrylic pen…
  Some guider pens…old and new…some in need of repair…look at the variety…!
  Oh…such lovely colours, those acrylics, reds, and blues, and browns, and whites… the yellow one in the middle is the Varsity pen…

The Zimbo has a removable clip (Hari told me it is called an ‘Accommodation Clip’), which Lakshmana Rao told me is known as the ‘Khadar Clip’…I asked him why it is called so, and he told me that during the early days of independence in India, many people wore clothes made of handspun cotton cloth called ‘khadi’ (also known as ‘khaddar’) and fountain pens were the only pens that were being used and many people who used fountain pens actually had a narrow pocket stitched to their shirts especially to keep these clipless pens… and fixed the clip when they had wore shirts with normal pockets...a very interesting anecdote from the history of fountain pens in India…
  The long and the short of it…the 9 inch Zimbo and the 1 ½ inch Mini…( I am sorry, the picture is not sharp enough…)

At that time, he told me, raw material was available only in places like Mumbai (then Bombay) and Chennai (then Madras) and once there was some problem with the regular supply chain and they couldn’t get the raw material in time and his father didn’t want to leave the unit and go to Mumbai and sent Lakshmana Rao’s elder brother…not knowing the ways of the big city, the young man lost his money and came back without the task fulfilled…Lakshmana Rao candidly told me that he had just finished his intermediate and had become an unruly young man roaming the streets without any specific aim in his life…his father saw this and wanted to give him some direction and initiated Lakshmana Rao into this skill and business and the intrepid young man that he was, he one day told his father that he’d like to go to Mumbai and get the raw materials for their pen making unit…he told me that that his father was initially reluctant, but the business was suffering and someone had to get things done…and for the first time, the 19 year old Lakshmana Rao went to Mumbai to purchase stuff from Dalal and Co…it was a successful trip and the first in the many many trips that he’d undertake around the country to sell his pens, buy raw materials, etc.
  Some new Guider models…the Zimbo is reclining on the top…

Lakhsmana Rao tells me that his father was an unlettered man and was one of the first batch of workers that worked for Ratnam Pens, when the founder of Ratnam Pens was in charge…Lakshmana Rao told me that many workers then branched out and set up their different units…and the senior Ratnam helped many with finance and expertise later too…and thus was born Guider Pens… Though unlettered, Lakshmana Rao’s father had native intelligence and skilled in his work and worked with intuition…and he recounted how his father used to test gold nibs by throwing them against a wooden board and they should pierce the board to show toughness...he would throw ebonite pens on the floor to convince customers that these were tough pens...and if any customer brought back a gold nib with some complaint, he would make a new one without any extra charge and more importantly, he would personally break the old nib lest his workers succumbed to temptation and repaired it and re-sold it….such was his father’s integrity, he told me… He told me about those days when the demand for FPs was very huge and they did not have the resources to fulfill the demand...people used to come to Lakshmana Rao’s shop and ask him to give whatever was available...he'd say let me fix the nib and feeder...they'd say...don't worry about nib and feeder...give them to us...we'll fix them...those good old fountain pen days…!!!
  Lakshmana Rao again…with his beloved pens…

Lakshmana Rao recounted an incident where a High Court judge had personally come to his shop for a new pen…and there was this huge protocol business with assistants, attendants, police and so on…and he said the judge spoke to him informally and all hangers on were surprised…and the judge pulled out a fountain pen from his pocket and told Lakshmana Rao that his (the judge’s) father had brought him to this shop (when Lakshmana Rao’s father was in charge) and gifted him this pen when had passed his matriculation and it had stood the test all these years…this pen was getting old and he wanted a new pen…and asked Lakshmana Rao to make him a new pen…

As a gesture of his affection, Lakshmana Rao gave me two Asoka Pens, ebonite pens made in Tenali (now closed down), for my AP fountain pens collection…and a cap and a barrel of what he said was a very old Sheaffer model (this is another story…)

Many many stories he told me that evening…I hadn’t recorded the conversation, mainly because I wanted to savour the memories…and there are many more that I haven’t recorded here…I hadn’t forgotten to take my camera…though…

MERLIN ED Ebonite Fountain Pens - from Warangal, Andhra Pradesh, India

In my quest to locate Indian handmade fountain pens, I often take the help of my colleagues in the college where I teach…I had mentioned earlier in one of my posts that Andhra Pradesh, the state where Hyderabad is located, was at one point of time a hub of fountain pen manufacturing activity…and many small towns had FP-making units…almost like a cottage industry… names of places like Rajahmundry, Tenali, Vijayawada, Guntur Machilipatnam, Kadapa keep cropping up when one talks of fountain pens from Andhra Pradesh…Rajahmundry, Tenali, Vijayawada are names still associated with pens...but pen units in Machilipatnam and Kadapa seem to have closed down…

And when my colleague Pavan told me the name of a pen shop in a town called Warangal (a town which is two hours by rail from Hyderabad)…I added the name of one more town to this list…and got in touch with the owners and asked them about ebonite fountain pens and they said they had two models…a large one and a small one…I requested them to send me two large pens (in fact, they had only two)…

And when I received the package and opened it, I was surprised to see the size of these pens…one pen was slightly longer than the other…the name MERLIN appears clearly on the clips of both pens…I called them simply Merlin-1 (the bigger one) and Merlin-2!!

Merlin-1 is slightly less than 7 inches capped; 5 ¾ inches uncapped; and 8 ¼ inches posted; and Merlin-2 is 6 ¾ inches capped; 5 ¾ inches uncapped; and 8 inches posted. Both are ED filler pens and really huge. I filled the barrel with water to check the reservoir capacity, and though I didn’t measure the amount of water it held, I realized one could go on for quite some time with a single filling. The nibs are regular iridium point nibs; though I feel a pen of this size needs a nib that is equally solid in terms of name and looks. Both pens look very strong and sturdy and the photos of the thickness of the barrel walls bear this out. When I saw the clips first, I felt there wasn’t enough gap near the top, but when I clipped the pen to my shirt pocket, it went up till the top and sat snug. Here are some pictures…


Both Merlins capped...


Both Merlins posted...


Clips with MERLIN on them...


I like this swirling design on the cap jewel...


Oh yeah...BTW, that is the MB 149 in the middle...

Thanks...

The Brahmam Duofold - Big Orange

Dear friends...

I have resumed posting after a long long time…lots of things happened in between which kind of prevented me from posting on a regular basis as I was doing before…that means I was not off reading and writing as such, but somehow something went awry and this kind of lethargy engulfed me and sometimes even when I had strongly made up my mind to write, I would sit there staring at the screen…anyway, hopefully all that would be gone with this re-start…during this time some of my friends would urge me to write and post something and after sometime, they too gave up…but this time, I am determined, I am sitting here in front of my laptop typing this out...I am back…

This post is about a pen that I instantly desired the moment I saw it...this is the pen I’d like to call the Brahmam Duofold Big Orange. I was at Deccan Pen Stores, Abids Branch, Hyderabad, on a mission some time back; and after that, as is customary with me, I asked Mr Wasim if he had anything special to show me…and he took out his special folder and showed me this pen…I fell in love with this pen at first sight…I was shocked and surprised (honestly!!)…I asked him the price and when he told me, my face kind of fell…I wanted this pen desperately and I was in a wretched condition, financially (I still am!!); but I think I lost my senses…I was not in a position to listen to my heart, my head, my conscience…anything at all…I told him confidently that I haven’t brought the money, and that I would buy it and that he should keep it in reserve for me till I call him and tell him that I can’t buy it…Mr Wasim knows me quite well in this sense because I have enacted this drama once before, but the cost of that pen was only a fraction of the cost of this pen…so, what to do now…the only recourse was to beg, borrow, or steal…the only option that appeared sane was to borrow…and so I borrowed vehemently from different sources and managed to put together the total cost of the pen…and triumphantly went and bought the pen, without even giving a thought to how I was going to repay the loans…I had the pen with me, that was enough…

I called it the Brahmam Duofold Big Orange…it is an eyedropper, made of celluloid and looks like a Big Red (Parker Duofold Red Permanite Lucky Curve Pen...look it up!!)…I always wanted to have a Big Red, but when I realised how much it cost, I put my desire in the backburner…and this was the closest that I could get to the Big Red…this is the Big Orange…I loved the orange colour and the natural black patterns on orange…the nib as the picture would show is Iridium Tipped Broad and is a US made nib…the name ‘Brahmam’ is engraved on the clip and ‘Brahmam Pen’ on the barrel…it has three gold coloured rings on the cap; a broad one in the middle, and two thinner ones around it…Mr Wasim told me that the clip and rings were ‘gold filled’…the cap jewel and the barrel cap are in black, and I think are made of ebonite…because discussions with a couple of fountain pen makers on celluloid fountain pens revealed that celluloid pipes are usually closed with ebonite caps to make fountain pen caps and barrels…

This pen is now more than 6 months old and you can make that out by the partly faded imprint on the barrel…and in the initial days I think the cap fell on a hard surface, (I don’t know when this happened, I don’t remember) and chipped the edge…I didn’t realise this and I happened to see this suddenly and couldn’t do anything about it…couldn’t have got a replacement even if I was willing to pay for another cap…these are designer pens…only a few are made and sold out as soon as they reach the shop…I felt sad, for the pen…such a lovely pen and this chip on the cap…this made me love the pen even more…it had a flow problem initially, but the Deccan people got it rectified and it now writes like a dream…