The story of the ink pen

Whoever knows me, knows my fetish for stationery. Like my roommate who is a behavioral economics student pointed out, it is an "unsophisticated present bias" which is a term used for consumers who know they have a problem but are not willing to change it to increase their utility. Anyhow I have recently shifted completely to using ink pens for the minimal writing I do. Do not be fooled, I have multiple ink pens and different colors of ink as well.

I filled my ink pen in the morning today and happened to write a lot that the ink ran out by the evening. This reminded me of something my grandmom always used to tell me “if you fill the ink once a week, there is enough to run for the whole week.” She could not be more wrong but I vehemently believed her and refused to check the ink level and it ran out on me every week at school, leaving me to borrow a pen from my classmates or shift to using a ball point pen. But this belief has stayed with me more like a superstition all through the years.

Everyone who is in their late twenties, as I am, would remember the famous ‘Hero’ pens as they were fondly called when we were in middle school. That is when we were allowed to shift from the pencils to the fountain pen. Later I got to know from my husband that they were known as ‘Chinese’ pen in his school. Somehow it all makes sense now. But I like the name ‘hero’ pens because it helps me reflect on the heroic entry they made into our lives. One of the biggest things we looked forward to in moving up to the 5^th grade in school was taking notes in pens than in the boring pencils. The boys of my school might have been keener about the 5^th grade because of their promotion into long trousers from the shorts. Such an important transitioning year the 5^th grade is. You also start having to take exams instead of worksheets.

So I owned a ‘hero’ pen too in my 5^th grade. Unfortunately or fortunately it was the one my dad used during his college days. I know, everyone must be thinking ‘ooh! fancy heirloom!’ Let me assure you there was nothing heirloomy about it. It was mostly because a ‘hero’ pen did cost a bit too much for a middle class family, this was the era privatization of the Indian economy had started only a decade earlier, so ‘Chinese’ pens were still very expensive. I think I did eventually get the cheaper and affordable ‘Camel ink pen’ (now Camlin since the Japanese company take over).

My hero pen unlike the new ones which my classmates owned, had a pliant tiny pump. The tininess of it cannot be overly emphasized. This ensured that I ran out of ink every single day. Then what was peculiar about my old ‘hero’ pen was it did not have a hooded fine nib, rather an arrow nib jutting out of the end of the pen. It did have the classic golden arrow on the nib nevertheless. This was proof for me that this was the ‘hero’ pen of yesteryears. It leaked and blotted profusely but I kept on because I believed in heirlooms and you are never to downplay them. Unless some days my classmates took fancy to this peculiar pen and exchanged mine with theirs – I would more than happily agree to the exchange because deep in my heart I knew the modern ‘hero’ pens worked better.

This time when I went home, my dad and I happened to go to a stationery shop to get some photocopies and I chanced upon the ‘hero’ pen. Interestingly like a 10 year old I pleaded my dad to get me one, because he was ticking me off for buying things I don’t need. These are things parents just won’t understand. To satisfy the dreams of your childhood. Guess what it cost only Rs 30, which looked so meagre considering our real incomes these days. Anyhow I gleefully bought it, only to realize it was just as horrible as my ‘heirloom hero pen.’ Though I never told this to my dad who was still bothered about my materialistic cravings.

A simple Google search tells me childhood pen is the 'vintage Hero 443.' Despite all this I have to say that my ‘hero’ pen never failed on me, and I think it still is lying around at home. I intend to pass it on to my kids as it is an ‘heirloom’ now and also for the fun of seeing they get tortured with my ‘hero.’