I've discovered a lost passion. The sheer joy of writing. Not on a keyboard as most writing is done nowadays but by hand. And not with a gel, a ball-point or even a Parker roller ball, but with ink. As I write this at close to midnight the only sounds I hear are the gentle scratches of a Lamy on paper and it's slowly becoming a very comforting sound.
The nib glides over the paper leaving behind a trail of waterproof black ink and thoughts are given form and substance. The romance of a pen writing about the emotions it evokes is hard to ignore.
Ink pens, I rediscovered thanks to two people. One, who gave me one before I left Bangalore for my short stint at Delhi and another who shared his passion with me and showed me what joy writing could bring. My collection has grown since then. Foraging through old cupboards to find relics of a lost time and cringing while buying an expensive Sheaffer. And not regretting it one bit after the first stroke it makes.
It's the nibs that fascinate me. How with time the abrasions on paper, which are ironically there to hold and bind ink, burnish the tips to an angle specific to the writer's style. To an extent that the only mark of respect one can give another's ink pen is to allow the pen to write as it it has a will of it's own. To an extent that after a few years the pen itself has a character. To an extent that it belongs, like no other possession, almost exclusively to you.It's a lost passion they say. Who has the time or energy to fill ink nowadays, when at, often, less than a hundredth of the price of a good fountain pen, one can get a gel.
Who has the time to clean nibs and buy good ink, to mourn a bent nib or a cracked body.
But the joy of feeling a pen slide across paper, giving ideas form, leaving a trail of black across white, is one that must be experienced to understand.
I have a new passion. I love it.