Two people in Gorakhpur would ask my father if I had left for the university after vacations. One was a shop owner who stocked the best chocolates in town. The other ran a stationery shop that had the best, or newest, pens. The greed for chocolates, I can assume, requires no explanation, but the craving for stationery is a different disease, and an affliction that is much less common.

It is sweet, though, to touch lovely paper. I have a book titled, On Paper, the EVERYTHING of its Two-Thousand-Year History . I must confess I have never opened it, although it has been on my shelf for a year. I bought it because of how lovely the paper felt when I picked it up at the bookshop — not an unusual marketing ploy given the title of the book. I will read it sometime, but, oh, that paper. Sometimes I pick up the book just to feel good.

I do not know if you have picked up those old Bibles, the ones with gold-ish edging on their papers, so that when closed, the books looked like a golden brick with black leather binding. And the paper was fine, and thin. The only thinner paper that I have come across is a Reader’s Digest dictionary that my mother’s uncle had gifted me. It was an encyclopaedic dictionary, in that it carried longer descriptions of some things, and included profiles of people up to Rajiv Gandhi. Its paper was thinner than onion skin, and the maps of countries were large blots of colour on that thin, thin paper.

But paper, especially blank paper, is only part of the thing. What really matters is what you put on it — words, images. And for that you need pencils, watercolour, or pens. And while I like pencils of all kinds, it is pens that have been the objects of my desire for a very long time. In my school days, which was decades ago, we longed for Parker pens, but could not afford them. Instead, we had the Wing Sung fountain pens, of Chinese make. They weren’t cheap, ₹20 compared to the Mon Ami ballpoints worth ₹5, but they had a sheen of sophistication. It was only a sheen, though, and they soon fell apart. The little pump with which you drew the ink — Chelpark, of course — from the bottle, usually gave up the ghost after a couple of months. And then it was just a leaky mess.

Even when it was working, a Wing Sung was messy, but those days I had hair, and that is where the ink got wiped, whether from my hands or the nib. Thank god for black hair. Nowadays I tend to use cartridges, and this problem rarely arises, except when I forget that I am carrying a fountain pen in a flight. The air pressure going up and down means that by the time I take off the cap, the ink has leaked. I have learned, though, that if you keep the nib up, say if the pen is clipped to your shirt pocket, then it does not leak. Also that black ink clogs nibs more than blue.

I use purple ink. Why? Because I can. We use pens so rarely these days, that I write only for the pleasure of writing, rarely because I need to — except when I have to sign in to a building. A friend gifted me a Lamy pen a couple of years ago. It is a simple pen, a good matte black plastic body, but it writes beautifully. To be honest, it isn’t the same pen, but because this is a good friend, I have bought the exact same model after losing the first one. And then again, after losing the second one. As I said, it writes beautifully.

A couple of years ago I was on the streets of Berlin, alone. It is sometimes good to be by yourself in a country and city not your own. It was a cold day, though not below freezing, and I ended up walking all around the city. I found myself in front of the huge Dussmann das KulturKaufhaus, a great bookshop for those who read German — which I don’t. It even had a fairly decent English section, and another for stationery. I found myself gazing at some lovely pens, including a Lamy fountain pen, that if you twisted the stem, a hole would open in the cap and a nib would appear. It cost €200 — a long way from my ₹20 Wing Sungs, too long away. I bought a €30 Kaweco instead, and was happy with it.

Omair Ahmad is the South Asia Editor for The Third Pole, reporting on water issues in the Himalayas; @OmairTAhmad

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