My First Article- Penchant for Pens

Exactly eleven years ago, my first article was published in a local newspaper marking my beginning as a writer. Not surprisingly, the article was about fountain pens and was titled ‘Penchant for Pens’ and Andhra Pradesh Times published it as a middle on October 12, 1996. I rang up everyone I knew when I saw it in the paper and also remember buying nearly half a dozen copies of the paper which had the paper vendor giving me a puzzled look. Regrettably, the paper folded up a few years later.

Since there were no online editions of newspapers at that time I am typing down the article here as it was published.

" Penchant for Pens by Vinod Ekbote

(Published in Andhra Pradesh Times dt 12-10-2006)

I belong to that blessed tribe of people who have an irrational desire to acquire pens. I became aware of this trait in my personality when I was at school. I harbored some vague ambitions of becoming a writer of sorts and thought it perfectly natural to acquire the requisite tools to fulfill the lofty ambition. So while my friends bought kites, marbles and other such playthings I spent all my pocket money on pens.

It was in the mid-seventies. Ballpoint pens were not yet within the reach of school children and fountain pens were the order of the day. I retained a special fondness for my first fountain pen that still lingers. Later on, when ballpoint pens flooded the market I was also carried away in the wave and for some time was under the mesmerizing spell of those neat little things. Since they were considerably cheaper I could afford to buy as many of them as my pocket money permitted. Later on I rediscovered the good old fountain pen.

As the years passed by, my obsession acquired considerable seriousness and I graduated from being an impulsive buyer of pens to a habitual buyer. I couldn’t pass a shop without darting in a buying a couple of pens. I still cannot pass a pen shop without being tempted to buy one or two pens. I buy them at the rate of two or three per week to the discomfiture of my family members who are exasperated at the sight of so many pens that my house resembles a mini pen store.

I’m attracted to pen stores like iron filings to a magnet and I calm down only after I’ve bought at least one pen. I’m a regular at the pen stores and the shopkeepers recognize me the moment I step in and eagerly rush to show me the latest arrivals. One went to the extent of calling me up to tell me that he had just received the most stunning collection of pens and I would rush to have a look. It’s an obsession my family is resigned to and they can tell from the dreamy look on my face that I had just bought a new pen.

The funny thing is that I haven’t yet begun to fulfill the noble ambition of mine to write, though I have collected enough pens to write something like an Encyclopedia Indiana. All the pens I bought remain unused until some passing relatives pick one or two to give them to their kids. Strangely enough, so far no one has presented me with a pen though my fascination for pens is a running joke among my family and friends.

I never leave home without a couple of them in my pockets. Like a cop who feels insecure without his gun I feel almost naked without a pen on my person. Also, I haven’t come across anyone with a similar obsession for buying pens though I have come across a few bureaucratic types who line their front pockets with a row of pens of all colors, and I suspect it has got more to do with impressing people than with the real intention of using them.

I have only one ambition in life and that is to buy a Parker Duofold fountain pen whose ad I came across in some magazine in the British Library about a year ago and I dream of it almost every night. It haunts me and in one of my dreams I’m taken to a psychiatrist by my family and he tells them that the only cure for my obsession is to buy me a Parker Duofold fountain pen. Alas, that drastic treatment is beyond my family’s reach and so I’ve made a rather grim decision. I’m going to write this sort of stuff and earn enough to buy that Parker and be forever cured of my obsession. And that, I leave to the mercy of editors. "

I’ve used some of the lines I wrote in this article in another article that was published in an in-flight magazine in February this year. It is here at this link. I suppose I have improved a lot after I wrote my first article. However, I have written about thirty articles since then and a couple of them were about fountain pens.