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...)
