A SUNDAY PACKED WITH BOOKS AND PENS

The Literary Review of The Hindu


It was a packed Sunday this week with lots of books and pen related stuff happening.
First it was the ‘Literary Review’ of ‘The Hindu’ that set the tone for the rest of the day. Since it was the first Sunday of the month, ‘The Hindu’ carried the supplement I look forward to very eagerly. This year’s Nobel Prize winner Doris Lessing was profiled on the front page as also another prize winner, the Booker winner- Anne Enright. Shashi Deshpande wrote that men are prejudiced against women authors but I don’t agree with her. An author’s gender doesn’t influence my reading choices and I guess if a guy doesn’t want to read something written by a woman why crib about it? I think this is taking the ‘discrimination-against-women’ thing too far. There’s more to be said about it but not now. Also, there is so much in the ‘Literary Review’ of this month that it needs a separate post to write about it all.

The Abids Routine- Finding two books and a catalog


Then as usual, I went to Abids. The festive shopping forces the book sellers out of their regular hangouts. This week too there were enough booksellers for me to fish out a couple of books. I found extra copies of books I’ve already read but I bought the books because they were too cheap and I wanted to give them away to friends. I found both these books at one place where each book was for ten rupees only. Surprisingly, the books were almost brand new. The first book was Elmore Leonard’s ‘Bandits’ and the second books was Philip Roth’s ‘Portnoy’s Complaint’.

The Caran d'Ache Catalog



The last book I found was not exactly a book but a catalog. After finding Mont Blanc catalogs all along until now, today I found a pen catalog of a different brand- Caran d’Ache. It was a small black,slim book lost among a heap of catalogs for jewelry. I got it for twenty rupees. The catalog had stunning pictures of some really beautiful pens. Some of the names were ‘Collection Joallerie’, ‘Privee’, ‘Hexagonale’, ‘Leman’, ‘Varius’, ‘Madison’, ‘Ecridor’ and ‘Dunas’. Needless to say each and every pen featured in the catalog was too exquisite to be described in words.


Meeting a Fountain Pen Collector

Later in the afternoon I met a serious fountain pen collector- a distinguished gentleman who had been an advocate. He had the most beautiful collection of fountain pens I have ever seen. The pens were lovingly stored in two wooden boxes and I could experience how the people who write with such pens must feel owning such pens when I handled the beauties. He had several Parkers, Namiki, a Conway Stewart and several other pens. We both were smiling away delightedly enjoying that rapport that comes with sharing a passion- a passion for fountain pens.



I am seriously thinking of putting pictures of the books , fountain pens and their catalogs I find, on the blog. But I need a good camera which I don’t have. Too bad I can’t share my finds with others.