Thrissur's 78 year old Pen Hospital that has treated Mrs Indira Gandhi's & Mr Kalam's pens

Few metres down the Town Hall Road from the famous Round in Thrissur district of Kerala is the small, single shuttered, seventy-eight-year-old shop were pens from many corners of India reach for repair. For someone walking this road for the first time it is quite natural that the shop may go unnoticed.

Written in yellow bold letters in black background on a small rectangular plate is the shop's name - Honest Pen Hospital. Part of the name plate is hidden by the rolled up shutter. Towards the lower half of an adjacent wall that faces the road is an interesting painting showing a fractured pen being carried on a stretcher by two fountain pens, below which is written: 'Hurry up to Pen Hospital and get complete cure.'

On the entrance hangs a small board with a caption 'Consulting Time.' 9 AM to 6 PM, the board reads.

Next to it, facing the shop's inside, hangs another board which reads 'Wait for 10 minutes.' This is board which Mr Nazar displays when he is away from the 'hospital' to do some household chores.

Unlike other hospitals, there are no receptionists, nurses, and doctors; there is just one man, Nazar, the pen doctor, who welcomes people walking into his 'hospital' with an appealing smile. Mr Nazar, 58, has been repairing pens for the past 36 years. However, the shop is older than Nazar himself.

Nazar's father, Mr Kaalathodu Koluthu Parambil Abdulla, was the one who founded this 'hospital' in 1937. Before founding this, Abdulla was working as a fountain pen mechanic in Bengal.

"Fountain pen users back then were very less. Swan, Blackbird, Pilot, etc. were the few fountain pens that were available in India, and they were costly. There was a demand for people who could repair these. After basic education, my father went to Bengal, learnt pen repair, and started working there. When pens became cheaper and more people started using them, my father came back to Kerala to do the same work here. Thus was born the Honest Pen Hospital," Nazar recounts.

The shop was first located in Thrissur district's St Thomas College Road. It was in 1959 that the shop was shifted to the location where it currently stands.

Nazar believes that pens have life. "There is some fore of attraction, like that of the magnetic force, between a pen and its owner. Only if you take good care of your pen and love it like your pet will it help you. The more you love it, the better will it help you to shape your thoughts on paper."

Nazar reminisces with pride the early days of this 'hospital' when his father was the doctor. "My father's fingers had some sort of magic in them. He knew pens so much that once he got a faulty pen in his hand, even before the owner could say what the fault was he would diagnose it. He could successfully cure all pen ailments. Few pens would require days of work while few could be cured in minutes."

There were not many exclusive pen repair shops in India and because of Abdulla's mastery in the craft, the Honest Pen Hospital earned a name for itself. Pens from different parts of the country used to come here for 'treatment.'

This shop in the southern state of India had the privilege of 'treating' the Prime Minister's pen. Once when Prime Minister Mrs Indira Gandhi's fountain pen stopped writing it was sent to this 'hospital.' "The pen was special to Mrs Gandhi because it was gifted to her by President of Soviet Union Mr Mikhail Gorbachev. She had it sent to my father through her secretary. My father repaired it and sent it back to the Prime Minister."

The senior pen doctor passed away in December 2010, and the news spread in the city. Nazar recounts a touching incident which shows how much people loved their service.

"Few days after my father passed away, a famous Ayurvedic doctor's son walked into the shop and showed me a fountain pen which my father had repaired. He had a touching story to tell. It was the only pen his father used to write with, he used to prescribe medicines using that pen alone. When its nib became faulty he had it sent to my father. But the nib was not readily available and it needed a week to be replaced. By the time the son had got the pen repaired and taken it to his father, the father had got another pen for himself. The father then asked the son to keep it for himself. Those days it was not common for a pen to be gifted, and the son cherished it so much that he got a wooden box made by a carpenter exclusively for keeping the pen and kept it safely in his locker. As years passed the son got many more pens for himself and he forgot his gift. It was when my father passed away that he got reminded of the pen and brought it to me. Even after so many years the pen worked perfectly."

As Nazar was telling me this story a customer walked in asking for a good fountain pen. Nazar showed him few pieces of the old, famous Doctor brand of pens made in Bombay. These pens are hardly available in ordinary shops as they are out of stock. Having sold the pen, Nazar told his customer to use the pen regularly, or else to wash the nib section and keep it dry. "This is an advice which my father used to give to every fountain pen user and it is because the Ayurvedic doctor's son heeded to this that his pen worked perfectly when we tried writing with it after years," says Nazar. He is continuing his father's practice of giving this advice to every fountain pen user he meets.

Honest Pen Hospital has also had many other celebrity customers. Among them were renowned Malayalm poets Kunjunni Master and Mr Vyloppilli Sreedhara Menon, both of whom were recipients of the prestigious Kerala Sahithya Academy Award. Former President Mr A.P.J. Abdul Kalam too had once visited this shop.

"President Mr Kalam had come to Ernakulam for some function, and the organizers of the event had cut a big shade-giving tree to make arrangements for his welcome. He came to know of it later when he had returned to Delhi after the function. He then asked the organizers to plant a sapling in its place and take care of it. For planting the sapling he came to Ernakulam again, and while he was placing the sapling in the pit that was dug, his pen fell into it and the pen's cap got stuck. He wanted it repaired and his secretary suggested to him this hospital. The President arrived here and I repaired the pen."

Since fountain pen users have fallen drastically and people who like to get their pens repaired have reduced even further, customers have dwindled. "But there are still many judges of the High Court of Kerala, advocates, doctors, and document writers who get their fountain pens repaired from here."

But this 'hospital' also repairs ball point and roller ball pens. As I was speaking to him there were many customers who came to fill ink in their roller ball refills. For those coming asking for a new refill without knowing that the used refill could be re-filled, Nazar informs them of this, despite the fact that what he earns for re-filling is ten times lesser than what he would earn by selling a new refill.

"It is not all about money. Of course money is a factor but I do it more as a form of service. I know how badly people get affected when the pen they use regularly stops working the way they want it to. Most of the service require minor tweaking of the feed and the nib and I do not charge anything for it," says Nazar. I myself had got my handmade Deccan Ambassador fountain pen's ink flow adjusted for which Nazar did not charge anything. He takes solace from the fact that he is keeping alive an establishment which his father had founded.

However, Nazar is disappointed with two things. "People hardly write these days. Most of the work is typed, and the emergence of social media has made people to type rather than write their thoughts. Many great authors who I have had the opportunity to interact with when they bring their pens to me for repair have said that thoughts can be better presented when written. Writing establishes a better bonding with the mind, they say."

Nazar is also bit disappointed with the drastic fall in the number of fountain pen users. "Apart from helping in improving one's handwriting, using fountain pens is more eco-friendly than ball point pens. Also, fountain pens bring sort of a discipline to life. It makes one slow down in this age of pace."

Curious to know which pen this pen doctor himself uses I asked him to show me his pen. "I am not a writer, I do not have a pen. All what I do is pen repair and once I finish working on a pen I write with it to see if it is working well. That's the only writing that I do, so I do not have a pen for myself." When asked if he had any favourites he replied in the negative.

As more and more people were walking into Nazar's 'hospital' for 'treatment' I packed my bag and asked him who would be the next doctor of this hospital when Nazar would grow old. "God alone has an answer," he said.

"I did not want to become a pen mechanic. I wanted to go to the Gulf. But while I was still in school there was some civil case on this property and my father had to often go to the court. I, therefore, had to spend my time here in his absence. I used to write down the customer's name and complaints on a piece of paper, and show it to my father when he returned, and then rush to school. This partly affected my studies, but in the meantime I also developed an interest in repairing pens. We had also set up a pen manufacturing unit and I got interested in that too. But as demand for fountain pens fell, pen making was becoming less economical. Thus we dismantled the unit and started focusing on repair, and also on sales of other pens. But for the civil cases in the court I would have been in the Gulf. It is God who wanted me here, and he will have someone else in mind when I am not able to discharge my duties."

Pen doctor Nazar's children are doctors too, but not of pens like him and his father. Both his children are medical doctors. Only thing he is sure of is that the next doctor in Honest Pen Hospital is not going to be either of them.

(Abridged version, published in The News Minute, can be found here)  

Small acts of inter-religious honour can bring about peace and unity

It has been over two weeks since this year's Ramzan. Though belonging to the Hindu religion, my parents undergo the one-month fast that Muslims do in their holy month of Ramzan every year. This was the fourteenth consecutive year of my parents undergoing this month-long fast.

Few days before the month of Ramzan in the year 2001, my father's close friend (a Muslim) and his family had spoken to my parents about the varied benefits of undergoing this fast, and had kindled the idea of trying to observe the fast in my parents' mind. However, to be frank, the factor that most influenced my parents to try it was the anticipated reduction in body weight which would most probably result, for both of them were, and continue to be, fat.

But what began as a mere attempt to reduce weight went further. Right from the first year they started feeling physically and mentally relieved after few days of fasting, and when thirty days of the fast was coming to a close they felt the need to also perform charity, something on the lines of Zakat al-Fitr, which, under Islamic tradition, is a compulsory charity that needs to be done by every Muslim to provide means for the poor to celebrate the opening of fast every day. Every Muslim was bound to do this, and the Prophet Muhammad said, "The fasting of the month of fasting will be hanging between earth and heavens and it will not be raised up to the Divine Presence without paying the Zakat al-Fitr." The mandatory charity entwined with holy Ramzan was thus, to my understanding, a deliberate attempt by the great Prophet to evanesce class divisions in the Islamic society. Right from time immemorial religions have linked man's social responsibilities to God(s), and the fear of God makes him to shoulder them, seeing it as a moral duty, which otherwise he would have probably neglected. My parents did this charity for few years, though it was discontinued after few years since we shifted our residence.

However, what has not stopped is the month-long fasting. And because this was the fourteenth year that my parents were fasting the incident got reported in a Malayalam daily in Kerala, on July 16, three days before the last day of Ramzan. Since then, my parents say, there have been few changes, which I feel are profound. 

My mother talks of how her non-Muslim colleagues express wonder upon her observing such a strict fast, as Hindus and Christians have comparatively very liberal means of religious fasting. But what is remarkable is not this. She talks of her Muslim colleagues showing great happiness in the fact that a Hindu couple is observing a Muslim religious practice, of a Muslim colleague of hers who had hitherto not spoken to her congratulating her for observing the fast. My father talks of how a Muslim shopkeeper in the neighbourhood invited him to his home as a mark of respect. My father was also told by a Muslim friend that the Mullah in a neighbourhood mosque, in the course of his sermon, spoke of my parents to show how people from other religions were showing an interest in Islamic religious practices. It seems the Mullah also asked the gathering to support my parents if they were in some need. 

I was not at home when all this had happened. When I returned home from Madras, I got to hear of all these developments. During my evening walk in my hometown, I always pass by a Muslim man's home who by profession is a painter of bill boards and number plates of automobiles. I see him working every time I walk that road. On seeing the report in the newspaper he delightedly showed it to a friend of mine and my father's, which my friend told me when I met him few days back. During my walk the next day I met the man. He was sitting on a concrete slab and eating fried groundnuts. He immediately rose, smiled at me, and walked to me saying that he had seen the report about my parents fasting. He immediately offered to me the groundnuts that he was having in his hand. Here was a man who I was seeing for over eight years, who hardly even smiled because we did not know each other (though we lived quite close by), but now was walking up to me and speaking jovially. I think it was something great. 

A small act of observing a religious fast of one religion by people belonging to another religion has evoked this sort of a response. I was wondering how it would be if we all did such small acts. During British Raj we have known about instances where Muslims used to celebrate Hindu religious festivals and vice versa, of Muslims not having beef and Hindus not having pork to honour each others religious beliefs and sentiments. The other day I was hearing a lecture of Senior Advocate and Member of Parliament Mr. Ram Jethmalani saying how in his childhood days in Sind, his birthplace, which was then, before partition, a part of India, Hindu families would buy new clothes for the year during Ramzan and Muslims would do so during Diwali. And that by doing so as children they all learnt to see people from other religions as one. He also spoke of how, during the communal riots that took place during partition, Muslims in his neighbourhood protected Hindu families by telling the rioters that there were no Hindus in the houses of that area, which made many Hindus, including him escape death.

For quite some time now religion has been used only, or at any rate primarily, as a means for dividing people. We are walking a path were divisions based on religion and caste are being made more and more conspicuous. Few lay the dangerous trap and most of us unwittingly fall into it. The attempt to polarize the hanging of Mr. Yakub Memon is the latest and perfect case in point. Of all that was happening I was amazed by the demand made by a "leader" of the Samajwadi Party in Maharashtra that Mr. Memon's wife should be made a Member of Parliament.   

"Everybody is agreed about the necessity of this (communal) unity. But everybody does not know that unity does not mean political unity which may be imposed. It means an unbreakable heart unity... We shall both (Hindus & Muslims) be voted irreligious savages by posterity if we continue to make a futile attempt to compel one another to respect our religious wishes." - Mahatma Gandhi. (p.244, Communal Unity, India of My Dreams)

Let us all respect every man without looking at his religion. Let us take that extra effort to learn the goodness in other religions, and also talk about those when we do about ours. Let us put to practice the good of all religions. Let religions remain but divisions made using them fade.               

The dinner hosted by the PM for Judges could have been avoided, may raise doubts in the minds of people

Prime Minister Modi hosted a dinner for the Chief Justice of India, all judges of the Supreme Court and the Chief Justices of all High Courts at his official residence on Saturday. This is perhaps the first time in post-independent Indian history that a Prime Minister has invited all judges of the apex court and the Chief Justices of all High Courts like this for a dinner. The precedent that has been set now will damage the basic trust that people repose in the Judiciary.

Separation of powers between the Executive and the Judiciary is a core value on which our constitutional democracy rests. It is only when one side goes wrong that the other pitches in. When a judge is found to be engaging in corrupt practices, the Parliament initiates action for his impeachment; when the executive strays from the values enshrined in the Constitution, the courts strike down the government's move. The separation of powers between the two organs is, therefore, essential for each of them to do their duty impartially. 

This government has been elected to power with a historic mandate, it has a brute majority in the Lok Sabha. That it does not have the requisite numbers in the Rajya Sabha acts as a brake. But we have seen the manner in which, by bypassing the Parliament, ordinances are promulgated, and even re-promulgated. It clearly shows that the Rajya Sabha brake isn't strong enough. It has supplemented the feeling that space for dissent has been considerably reduced, and that this sort of majoritarianism is not good for the great Indian democracy.

In such an atmosphere, if a situation arises, it is only the Judiciary that can balance the government's power and act as a check. The separation of powers between the two is more important now than ever before. The Judiciary has been coming down heavily on the government for its callous attitude on certain issues, off-loading of the Greenpeace activist for instance, and the government has been trying to prove its might whenever given a chance, like on Mr Gopal Subramanium's judgeship issue. There had also been a friction between the two organs over the National Judicial Appointments Commission (NJAC). Union Minister for Law and Justice Mr Sadananda Gowda had said during an event in January instant that there would be no more appointments to the higher judiciary until the petitions in the Supreme Court challenging the NJAC were disposed off. Later, however, he informed the Rajya Sabha that the appointments would continue until the law was notified. 

"Tension between the Judiciary and the Executive is a welcome sign. The so-called harmony of the two may well be at the expense of constitutional democracy itself," senior advocate and former Union Minister for Law and Justice Mr Ram Jethmalani had once said. Many from the opposition parties and the judicial circles had screamed blue murder when the Chief Justice of India praised the Prime Minister as a "good leader, good human being, and a man with foresight" during a meet with journalists. A mere utterance of what the Chief Justice had in mind about Prime Minister the person had created sort of an uproar. It was then rightly said that personal opinions of judges should not be expressed openly given the kind of impartial role that their office demands. Such actions would breed unnecessary questions in minds of people over the impartiality of a judge. 

When a judge attends a function hosted by an influential person, and later when a case is adjudicated in that man's favour, it is but natural that negative motives would be attributed. It is because of this that judges lead a very insulated life in the society. One may say that judges are trained to act impartially and that therefore motives need not be attributed to such instances. But there is perception that will not let man remain silent, and perception does play a vital role. It is necessary in the interests of democracy that such perception does not take birth, and a dinner party as hosted by the Prime Minister for judges will definitely give rise to such. 

Of all organs and bodies of the State, it is the Judiciary that is considered to be the least corrupt. And it is because of this that despite delay in the long process of rendering justice, people's faith in the Judiciary has remained. Also in our Constitutional setup the raison d'etre of a powerful and independent judiciary is to caution, and if necessary stop, the Executive when it does not follow the spirit of the Constitution. The government being the largest litigant in the courts, any instance of a public bonhomie between the two organs will undoubtedly raise suspicion in the minds of people. The BJP may well say that Saturday's dinner was just a casual meet, but the people may not take it that casually.
       
The separation of powers between the two pillars of democracy have been working well, and any action which would even make a slight impression that the separation is being depleted should be avoided. If the Prime Minister has thought that his decision to invite the judges for a dinner is a sound diplomatic move, sorry Mr Prime Minister, it will be a disaster.

The intention of the Prime Minister may be good but the message that it will send to the public will be that the Executive is now trying to woo the Judiciary, which remains the only strong body that can oppose the mighty Executive. Post-retirement appointments of judges is an issue that is being debated and such dinners would add fuel to that debate. Today it is all Chief Justices and judges of the apex court, tomorrow it could be a selected few who are invited for dinner.  

The last hope was that the Chief Justice of India and all the judges who had been invited would decide to not attend the dinner, but that hope has now been killed.