Ode to a Humble Gel Pen

I am a fountain pen guy. I just love fountain pens. I do not know about others, but I enjoy cleaning fountain pens, filling them, rotating the several ones I have and packing and storing them lovingly and taking them out once in a while just to enjoy looking at them.  I have to try very hard to resist buying the ones which catch my fancy. Fact is, most fountain pens catch my fancy. I never buy ball point or roller ball pens. Never. Not that I do not have any in my stockpile, but they are never purchased by me. They are all gifted.

There is another category of pens that come into my possession. These are the giveaways. Handed over to you in folders at conferences, Annual General Body Meetings, Residents ’Welfare Association meetings, during visits to institutions and factories, in training sessions and even in some airline flights! They range from the wonderful twist action Roller Ball Pen given to me by Maxwell School, Syracuse University to the gold Cross pen by Vatican to the cheapest ballpen that would not see me even through some doodling in a boring board meeting. I just throw most of them in a large beer mug I have on my desk. They sit there mostly unused, till they find their way into the bottom drawer of my old chest of drawers or into the garbage bin.

There is one exception to this routine. They are the Add Gel pens given away to me every time I visit India’s premier National Police Academy for the training of Indian Police Service officers at Hyderabad. I am a frequent visitor to NPA. I frequently conducts trainings or give lectures to the trainees there. I am also a member of the Board of the Academy necessitating my attending the Board meetings. The NPA has zeroed down to Add Gel pens. And thank God for that. I find these writing instruments the next best things to a real fountain pen.

These pens are the product of Mumbai based Add Corporation, who have been producing these and other fine writing instruments from 1987. Currently they have two state-of-the-art production facilities at Umbergaon and Daman in Western India.

The ink never dries or runs out. The blue is a nice shade reminding me of Diamine Majestic blue and black is also very pleasing shade. I have literally dozens of these placed at strategic locations like bedside, kitchen table, hung on refrigerator and near the WC in the toilet.  Whenever one has to take notes on paper with poor quality or unsteady support, I would not like to risk using and damaging my fountain pens. These Gel pens are pressed into service at these occasions.

The rubberized grip with indented pattern helps achieve good grip. The size of the grip is such that almost everyone finds it comfortable to hold. The writing quality is, like in almost all gel pens, smooth as hot knife on butter. Good thing and bad. My handwriting tends to get bad if the writing is so smooth. Good thing is, I can put more pressure on the paper and increase resistance without fear of damaging the nib.

I occasionally buy red and green refills for these. I use the green and red Gel pens to underline and highlight the important points in my ‘to do’ lists and lecture notes. Red is also useful in correcting drafts.

I only wish Add would make a nice well crafter resin or metal holder for the refills so that one could also enjoy the feel of the pen as well as the smoothness of writing. For me, what I really miss in the Add Gel pen is the solid feel and balance of a well made pen. The plastic light thin cheap body takes away from Add gel half the pleasure of writing.

Lamy Safari, My All Time Favourite Fountain Pen

If I have to name one pen as my all time favourite, I will name Lamy as the one without a second’s hesitation. There are close competition from the likes of Pelikan M200, TWSBI Diamond530 & 540, Sheaffer Targa, Polit Namiki VP, etc. but it is Lamy that I go back again and again to. Also, I have lost the maximum number of Lamy Safaris to friends and strangers stealing them or simply taking them away. I have also gifted a number of Lamy, mostly Safaris to young students and those whom I motivate to use fountain pens.

My first Lamy was a red Safari with a converter. I first got a chance to try out a Lamy Safari when I saw Mr. Arun Shourie the redoubtable investigative  journalist while on his visit to Guwahatti, Assam, where I was posted during the turbulent days of Assam Agitation. I was simply floored by the smoothness of the nib and the smug way the section fitted into my grip. I decided then and there I must have one of these. During the early Eighties, pens or for that matter any foreign item was not easy to come by in India. My desire had to be suppressed, at least for the time being.

That was till I was introduced to the Vandana Book Shop in Aurobindo Marg, New Delhi. This small book shop is a remarkable place if you are a pen aficionado. I know of no place in Delhi where you can get almost any international brand pens. If they are not readily available, it shall be produced on order, God knows from where! Have you an antique pen that needs restoration with TLC? This is the place for that too. As I walked into the store once I saw a red Lamy Safari being put back into the case. Obviously, someone had just seen it and did not buy. I jumped at it and almost snatched it from the gentleman’s hands. Thus I came to possess my first Lamy Safari, one among the many that I was to own over the next three decades.

This pen I lost to a visiting family whose son took an immediate fancy for it and chose to put it in his pocket without even so much as asking! Currently, I have only one Safari with me. A dull gray affair compared to all the other flamboyant colours like yellow, blue, red and metallic charcoal. It has a medium nib and is fitted with a converter.

I also had a set of White Safari and Ball pen, but the pen is gone and I am left with the Ballpen. I was gifted a Vista Clear Roller ball Pen, which is with me resting in a large pen holder cup  and under frequent use.  My red Lamy Safari 0.5 mm Mechanical pencil is also among my favourites. My search for a 0.9 mm pencil has still not yielded results. Another Lamy in my arsenal is a gray Tipo roller ball pen.

I do not need to comment on the legendary writing qualities of Lamy Safari. On a personal note, what makes Lamy my favourite pen is the perfect grip that I get from the peculiar shape of the section. I find the ink flow of the Fine and Medium perfect, though I have never used a Broad or Italic nib of Lamy. I also love the smoothness of the nib, the way it glides over even poor quality paper. Government of India and the State Government of Haryana use very rough quality noting sheets for official file works. I have used Lamy pens in office work for nearly 30 years. Even those papers could not take away the sheer pleasure of writing with a Lamy Safari.

Lamy Safari is also a very tough pen, capable of withstanding quite a bit of rough handling. I have carried Safaris in my shirt pockets on wildlife photo tours, travel to Khardung La, the highest motorable road on earth and even had them lying around in closed automobiles left in the summer sun of India with outside temperature in the regions of 45 Degree Centigrade! Not that I would recommend such unkind treatment as a routine affair to anyone, but it just happened once. I am glad to say, at the end of the day, Lamy continued to perform as if nothing happened!

The less expensive Safari shares crucial mechanisms like nib, feeder and converter with its more expensive brethren. So in the final count, whether you stick to Safari or opt for the more costly version of Lamy writing instrument is simply a matter of style, not substance.

The toughness and the quality of writing are the reasons why I always recommend Lamy Safari as the first pen for anyone newly wanting to join the fountain pen users ’club. Except for just one person, all to whom I have recommended Lamy Safari have loved the pen.

Tow Odd Pens From Rural Tamil Nadu

Recently some family matters took me to a remote area of District Thirunelveli in Tamil Nadu. I was visiting my sister’s agricultural farm in Village Sivasailam, on the foothills of the Western Ghats, on the Tamil Nadu side. The idyllic farm of cocnut, Cashew, Mango and Teak trees touches the verdant forests on the hillside. The Kadana Nathar dam just a few hundred yards away provides abundant water and a nice picnic spot for the evenings. The approach to the farm is from the Shencottai Thitunelveli Road off a small settlement called Alwarkurichi. The farm is 8 KM from Alwarkurichi, which is the place from where you have to pick up milk, bread, oil, spices, etc. for the daily needs at the farm. Sivasailam is the ancestral village of Late Shri. Sivasailam, Founder and Chairman of the TAFE Group of Companies, famous, among other things for the Massey Ferguson tractors and farm equipment. A philanthropist to the core, Sivasailam did much for the upliftment of the people of his area. Paramakalyani Post Graduate College, Alwarkurichi is one such endeavour of the great man.. While my sister was busy picking up stuff, I noticed a store selling books, stationery and such things, basically for the students of the college and nearby schools. Out of curiosity I decided to have a look and see what a typical rural student of the area would be buying. I had hoped to see some fountain pens as even today in the Southern part of India, there is much emphasis on handwriting and use of fountain pens.

What I saw there took me totally by surprise. I was expecting some standard brands like Camlin, Bismi or Bril, but I found two very odd looking pens on sale. I was informed by the shopkeeper that these pens were very popular and he had such good feedback he stopped stocking more costly standard brands.

The larger pen is called Winstar model Tank No. 15 with a blue body and a slit window of transparent plastic to view the ink level in the barrel. The cap is clear plastic with blue plastic clip. The overall finish shouts out “cheap”. The finish and fit are crude and the material is cheap plastic crudely moulded. The nib is golden coloured steel and the section is fluted for good grip. Once you remove  the section from the barrel you can see liberal amounts of grease applied to the thread to prevent leaking. The grease looks like ordinary petroleum product and certainly not silicon grease. But then the temperature in Alwarkurichi fluctuates in a very narrow band and silicon is not needed. Or probably such pens cannot afford the luxury of silicon grease.

The other pen is obviously meant for teachers. This one with a demonstrator type plastic barrel has two compartments, one for blue ink and the smaller one for red ink used for correction.

The longer section has a blue cap and ill fitting black plastic clip, while the smaller section has a clear plastic push type cap. Both caps fit in by rubbing against the section. This one has a name Goodwin and model is 2511.

I did not fill ink in either of the pens but tried writing by dipping the nibs in a pot of ink. The larger pen, the Winstar is a surprisingly good writer. The short stubby nib writes medium and is extremely smooth. The double barrel Goodwin is a mixed bag. The larger barrel has a nib which is fairly smooth but the smaller one leaves much to be desired.

For Rs15 (30 cents) and Rs.12 for the double barrel, they must rank among the cheapest pens on earth. Except that they look cheap too. But they write better than some pens costing 10 times the price but with better finish. These two will remain my mementoes from the visit to the lovely Tamil countryside and the memorable stay in the farm at Sivasailam!