pens

Reading Vasuki’s blog on “pens” brought back so many memories and I was compelled to write this post.

Unlike most kids I did not go through a pen collecting phase.

In the convent I studied, having a good handwriting was paramount. Most people will ask you whether you are from CKC if you have a neat handwriting (i.e. if you are a gal as well).

We started writing in ink pens from 3^rd standard. We would get a nice beating if any of the sisters caught us with ball pens. It was believed that ball point pens spoil your handwriting. So we were made to write in cursive writing books…girls with good handwriting were praised and given toffees.

Now imagine a set of 3 rd std monkeys with something as fun as ink pens! By noon, we would have ink all over our palms. Before we became sophisticated enough to wipe the bleeding pens to our hair…we found out that it was fun to wipe it on someone else’s shirt!

If you liked someone you would let them write something on your palm with their ink pen and if you didn’t fancy any girl you would simply squirt some ink on her using some leaky ink pen.

Then a genius of a girl found out something…ink was quite edible. So instead of wiping the leaky pens to our heads we wiped it against our tongues. Once the whole tongue was blue enough we would go about displaying it to every other girl which would generate much awe or prompt them to lick their nibs as well.

Later in high school when we upgraded ourselves to ball point pens…squirting ink no longer held any fancy..but biting the back of your Reynolds pen when you looked outside the window..now, that was the rage. If the pens got mixed up...we could make out from the bite marks. Some were talented enough to bite to form designs on the back of their pen. During exam times, my Reynolds pen would be in such bad shape that if I held it upright, the refill would simply fall down.

A laptop is more convenient but it cannot compensate for the fact that it’s no good when it comes to scratching your head or biting-the two most important parts of writing well.