Since I had over 4 hours of wait time in Delhi airport, I started checking out the stores before going to the Lounge. Well, checking out is an overstatement. Since most of them were selling clothes or jewelry or suitcases and all that, I browsed them from a fairly safe distance. Till I came to the book shop. Which had a pen section!!

Ten minutes later, these two old style Parker pens were mine! Some of you might remember these from our childhood as the pens with the short nibs. Made of stainless steel, they are less flexible and therefore “give” very little even under pressure. If you like fine tip nibs, you will like these. Found out that Luxor is the company that markets Parker pens in India.

The ink pot was part of the package. I could not convince the shopkeeper to open the package (these require those scissors and all that to open up) and throw away the ink.

This evening, I made a foray into College Street to check out College Pen Forum. Wanted to see if there were some interesting new or old fountain pens. The trip itself was a bust since the the gentleman there thought that showing me various pens would be a waste of time and waas focusing his time on selling those inexpensive ball points and gel pens that were flying off the shelf.

Interestingly, amongst all those bulk pens, he had a winner of a fountain pen – the Pilot Justus 95. It has a very interesting mechanism that can turn the nib from hard to soft (and various settlings in between). Basically you turn the edge of the pen and as you do so, a metal plate comes out on top of the nib split. By controlling that fulcrum point, you control how much the nib will “give”. Very unique mechanism. That would set you back by over $320 in the USA or about Rs 25,000 in India.

However the most interesting experience was noticing that sign you see in the middle of the picture. You probably remember from your school days how you bought your notebooks (to write on). They were priced per notebook or might be by the dozen. That is how we grew up. That sign says you can buy by the kilogram – meaning the weight of the notebooks you buy. So, you pay by the weight instead of the count! I checked with my brother. And he confirmed that is how he buys notebooks for the nephews!

Never knew this!