My Two Latest Lovelies

It is quite difficult describing the way one feels to possess something one has only dreamt about until then, especially if it is something highly unaffordable for the likes of me. It feels different to own a luxury item one hasn’t paid for. Every time I take out the Mont Blanc that I got as a gift and look at it, I feel like going down on my knees and saying a prayer of thanks. Getting that beautiful fountain pen as a gift was something of a major miracle of my life, one that perhaps might lead to another. However, apart from the envious looks it generates a Mont Blanc also has its downside.

A Mont Blanc, needless to say is more than an object d’art. It is a glorious tool that writes like a dream, gliding on the paper like silk. While writing with it one (at least for me) feels like one can write stuff that will bring the awards. Ironically, I do not write with it as often. Somehow I cannot get myself to write with that magnificent pen every day. I feel it is too precious a thing to use to write the sort of stuff I do if you get my drift. There’s another reason why I do not write with it. I scribble quite a lot everyday, sometimes filling up nearly five pages of, usually, nonsense. Given the kind of writing I do I have to pause to refill my Mont Blanc after just a couple of paragraphs. I would be using up at least one bottle of Mont Blanc ink every month if I use the pen to write regularly. In case you did not know a bottle of Mont Blanc ink costs nearly nine hundred rupees. One can imagine the size of the hole it will make in my wallet if I write with my Mont Blanc everyday. However, I do love my Mont Blanc Meisterstuck. While I love everything about the Mont Blanc, the sleek, light body, the shape, the fit, and especially the nib, I do not like its filling mechanism. It is a pain to fill the ink. I am a simple sort of chap and want everything to be simple. So I am always on the look out for a pen with a smooth nib and one that has an open barrel without any fancy filling mechanism.

The problem with other handmade fountain pens that I own is while they are great to look at and hold their nibs are almost third rate. When I read on Biswanath Ghosh’s blog about the Wality pens with Sheaffer nibs that he bought at Chennai I was keen to get one for myself. Recently one of my friends happened to visit Chennai and I asked her to get three such pens for me from Gem & Co. I was told that Gem & Co was no longer fitting Sheaffer nibs to Wality pens and instead I could get Gama pens with the Sheaffer nibs. I agreed. After a long wait I got my three Gama pens- two blue and one steel bodied fountain pen, fitted with Sheaffer nibs with medium point. It was an agonizing wait. But it was worth the wait because they are exactly what I was looking for all these days. They are of the right weight, size and also they write very smoothly. I had planned to keep all three for myself but I gave away one to a friend. I have decided to keep the blue one at home and the steel bodied one at the office.

However, I found that the Gama fountain pens aren’t so perfect. One problem is that the body is made of plastic which appears to be too fragile. One has to be careful not to drop the pen or use too much force to open it while filling it with ink. Another irritating thing is that they have a starting problem. After keeping aside the pen for a while the nib dries up and one has to shake it or fiddle with the nib to get the ink flowing again. To sort the problem out I took the pen to the experts at Deccan Pen Store. Deccan Pen Stores has experts who can fix any problem with any pen. They told me I may have to replace the plastic feeder with an ebonite feeder. I now want to get ebonite feeders for both the pens but the only problem was that I have to leave the pens with them. They have to make the feeder individually by hand which can take a couple of weeks. One of these days I plan to give one of the pens to Deccan Pen Stores to fit the ebonite feeder while I write with the other pen.

I have to thank a lot of people for bringing these pens to my hands. Thanks, Biswanath Ghosh for giving me the info about Gem 7 Co. Big thanks to Subha for bringing them from Chennai. Thank you, Gem & Co, for making the pens. Thanks, Uma Shanker for the pictures above.