Three Things

The Fountain Pen
I always lose my heart to the beautiful ones, fountain pens, that is. A few weeks ago when Uma showed me his new Hero fountain pen I wanted one for myself at any cost. It was a beautiful one, quite unlike the usual Hero fountain pens, with an open nib and eye dropper ink filling mechanism which I prefer. It was sleek, light weight and wrote so well that I fell in love with it right away. It wasn’t until recently that Uma traced out one for me.

When I hold a beautiful fountain pen like my new Hero I feel like Elmore Leonard, Dave Barry and Gabriel Garcia Marquez all rolled into one. It is enough to have it in the pocket to feel like a writer. I don’t feel it is necessary to write anything to feel like a good writer. To me the feeling of being a writer is enough there are people who have written three books and don’t feel like writers, forget about being considered as writers. With a pen like that in hand I feel it isn’t really difficult to write a novel.

The Notebook
For the same reason that I pick up fountain pens I also pick up notebooks though not as often as I want to. Sometime last month I was on a training session in the company of officials from outside the state. We were taken on a sightseeing trip to Shilparamam where I chanced upon some lovely notebooks in a stall. They were of handmade paper with a soft brown leather cover. I picked up one for fifty rupees and decided to buy a few more sometime later. I want to buy at least three for myself and a couple more to give away to friends. I hope the stall is still there at Shilparamam.

The Bookmark
One of the many things that my kid handcrafts, some happen to be bookmarks. Tired of watching me use platform tickets, visiting cards, folded bus tickets and the like as bookmarks he makes them for me. But I don’t have the heart to use them because I tend to misplace my bookmarks too often. I don’t want to lose the bookmarks he makes spending a lot of time and effort on them. The one in the picture is the latest bookmark he made for me. By the way, he was short listed for the finals of the ‘Young World Painting Competion’ the finals which will be held next Sunday. Watch this space for more about the result.