After spending hours walking through the very crowded streets of Bombay’s Chor Bazar, I walked to the Abdul Rehman Street. Abdul Rehman Street is famous for all sorts of office and house stationery, both wholesale and retail. I was there in search of Indian fountain pens. I enquired in many stationery shops but I wasn’t getting what I wanted. As soon as I said that I wanted fountain pens other that the usual Parker and Hero, and few Indian ones, most shopkeepers gave a cold NO in response. I asked, to those few who were a bit gentle in their NOs, if they had fountain pen nibs, the replies to which, again, were disappointing. At last, one gentleman shopkeeper told me that if I walked bit further I would find an old man’s roadside shop where I could get all these. I was delighted!
Hardly would I have walked a 100 steps and I found a small shop on the footpath. It was a slightly raised wooden platform, over which on three sides were old, four-feet-high wooden stands. On these I could see plenty of boxes and pouches containing various brands of ball-point and fountain pens. Spread towards a corner of the raised platform was a small cushion on which the man was sitting. Grey haired with a long, sharp nose, he was, looking through his white rimmed spectacles, selecting a pen from a box to show his customer who was sitting opposite to him on a stool.
Seeing me he pulled out a small stool and asked me to sit. When the customer was checking out the pen he was given, the man asked me what I wanted. I showed him my Doctor brand fountain pen (a yesteryear Bombay based pen company whose pens are hard to find now) and said that it was releasing more ink than it should and, therefore, I wanted the nib changed. “Shall I show you German nibs?” he asked me in Marathi with a great deal of enthusiasm. I was surprised; I would have said no but for the energy in his voice. I wanted to know what this small shop had to offer and said okay. He took a small cylindrical plastic bottle and took out one nib from it. I extended my hand to have it examined but he said that I would not know its worth by merely seeing. He soon removed the nib from my pen and inserted the German nib. His fingers moved fast and were strong despite his age. He dipped the pen in an ink bottle, made vertical curves on a small sheet of paper and then gave it to me for trying. It wrote really smooth.
By then the other customer decided that he was purchasing the pen that he was shown. But he wasn’t satisfied with the price as he felt that it was on the higher side. The shopkeeper soon asked me how much I had paid for my Doctor pen. I said I had paid Rs 150. He soon turned to the other customer, and, in an attempt to justify the price that he had quoted, said in Gujarati, ‘Look, for this he has paid Rs 150. What is there in this pen!’ The customer, who was a Gujarati, agreed. We three then started talking about pens and nibs in Hindi. The customer who had come there was a doctor – an anesthetist. He soon gave his business card to the shopkeeper, and in return the old man said that he was Jayantibhai. And then, from his pocket, he took out a business card and gave the doctor. I asked for one too. For a roadside shopkeeper to have a business card was something! The card had New Stationery & Fountain Pen Mart printed on it. And below it was written Jayantibhai Penwala. The doctor paid the money and rose to leave. “Don’t give your pen to anyone else for writing,” Jayantibhai told him. He looked at me and repeated the same advice.
After the doctor left I told Jayantibhai that I wanted to see other nibs that he had. He showed me few Indian nibs and I chose one from them and said that I would take that. There were many small boxes that were full of nibs. All were old stock but in good condition. Rarely will one get to see this variety of nibs in any shop. Then out of curiosity I asked him if he had old Indian fountain pens too. He said that he had a few and started showing me old variants which I had never seen. I could see that most of them were not taken out for many years; it was all dusty. But Jayantibhai cleaned each of them in water, wiped them dry, checked if each of them were writing properly, and only then gave it to me.
This Clipper fountain pen had a different ink filling mechanism which I had only seen in the internet in an expensive Waterman model. One just needs to move the clip on its body up and down few times and the nib would suck ink.
Then Jayantibhai showed me a Cruiser fountain pen. Filling mechanism was by rotation of the bottom part. By rotating the bottom part clock-wise all air & remaining ink in the tank will be released and then by dipping the nib in the ink pot and rotating it anti-clockwise ink will be sucked in.
He then showed me another box. A treasure box. It had all antique and vintage pens – Parker Vacumatics, Parker 45s, 51s, et cetera.
By now we had become friends. I asked about him. He was from Gujarat and was 84 years old, he said. I learnt from him that he was into pen business since his early days and had this shop for the last 20 years. He told me that his brother had a fountain pen company by the name Jyoti Pens where he used to work. When the demand for fountain pens came down the company started incurring losses and eventually had to be shut. It was then that Jayantibhai started this shop. He says that he comes here because he loves pens. He has 2 sons Bipin and Nilesh. One is working in a company and the other runs this shop. “I have told him that I will be here till afternoon. I want to be here. After having lunch he comes here and then I go home and take rest,” Jayanthibhai told me.
He told me a lot more about pens that he had seen and used. He showed me Lamy company’s famous model Safari. “This is a duplicate China-made Lamy for Rs 500. The original is for Rs 2000. Why do people need so costly pens! In my time pens were so cheap and they of great quality. A pen would last for ages. Times have changed; quality has dropped. But now people have money and they keep buying.”
We spoke for almost an hour and hardly any customers came. One came asking for a ball-point pen’s refill which he did not have. Another came asking for some fancy looking ball-point pens but he did not like what Jayantibhai had.
(This post first appeared in The Yatra Diaries)
