By The posts that are published on this website are written by hand – the traditional notebook and pen way. They are later typed, edited, paired with suitable graphics and further additions related to SEO are made. This act of putting the pen to paper gives a wholesome feeling to the experience of writing itself. Thus, in the process of doing this, I suddenly remembered my first experience of writing with a pen and share the same here.
It was a general practice in the school I studied, to allow Primary School students to only use pencils. Thus, up to grade 5, only pencils were allowed and from Grade 6 onwards, pens were allowed symbolizing that you became big students of the Middle School.
There were just a few months in completion of my Grade 5, when I heard from one of my classmates say that only fountain pens would be allowed from 6th to 9th Grade- only fountain pens and no other pens. As if the shock from moving from pencils to pens was not sufficient; now I had to face the shock of finding and getting used to a fountain pen. The beauty of writing with a pencil is that, you can make infinite number of mistakes and simply use an eraser and wipe off the trail of all those mistakes. Perhaps, that’s what it meant to move from Primary to Middle school, to look back and appreciate your mistakes.
Anyway, it was thought by the school management that fountain pens would improve the handwriting of the students. Hence, during the short vacation between grade 5 and grade 6, I told my mother that we needed to purchase a fountain pen. So, we went to the nearby general store to find the same, but the store only contained ballpoint pens. We even searched in little bigger stores, but they sold only gel and ballpoint pens. (This was in Muscat, Oman where we were relatively new and it was hard to find such a specific thing)
While hunting for fountain pens in these stores, I found something called an ink-killer. Let me first define an ink-killer: This is a pen like device that opens from both sides and has caps on both ends, one of these sides contains a sponge like material that when put on words written by a fountain pen on paper, erases it. However, once it is erased, you cannot write with the same fountain pen in the area and instead you need to open the other side of the ink-killer that contains a sketch pen like writing device that allows you to write on the location where the ink was killed. (In the picture in this post, you can see the same. Mind you, ink-killer only works on fountain pen ink and not ballpoint or gel pens). I purchased this device called ink-killer, thinking that when I find my fountain-pen, my transition from pencil to pen will be easier, allowing me to make mistakes and have the hangover of the primary school.
Coming back to the hunt for the fountain pen – after a comprehensive search which involved going to the centre of the city and finding a stationary shop; my fountain pen was finally found. The pen’s name was ‘Hero’ and my parents got two of these- one was dark green in color and the other was brown.
In order to fill ink into this pen from an ink-bottle (purchased from the same shop), I had to squeeze the tube of the pen and create a vacuum. Then, I had to put the entire nib and head of the pen into the ink-bottle till it sucked ink into the tube. Once it had done so, I had to further check that it was not over-filled or it would end up blotting my notebooks. At the end of this ink-filling ceremony, of which I was a novice then, all my fingers and parts of my palm would be stained with ink.
A fountain pen requires constant writing to make it suit your grip, it is designed to adapt to your grip and not vice versa. The pen is constructed in such a way, that after some time, it becomes yours. If anyone else writes with ‘your’ fountain pen, they might not share the same experience. That is the beauty of a fountain-pen; it becomes yours-truly.
I wrote with both these fountain pens of mine for a long time, even beyond my middle-school. Of these two fountain pens, I don’t know where I misplaced the brown-bodied hero pen, but I still have the dark green one.
I wrote this article with yet another fountain pen, which uses an ink-cartridge instead of the elaborative ink-filling ceremony. I am glad that the first pen that I wrote with was a fountain pen, indeed, it was a joy to write with it. I do miss my brown hero pen and my ink-stained hands.
