Wednesday, October 31, 2012

In search of the nostalgic MISAK Fountain Pen (in Hyderabad, India)...PART 3...Hari's Misaks


This is Part 3 of the Misak series…a kind of guest post…text and photos contributed by my friend Hari Balakrishna…

I had posted both parts of my search for Misak pens as one post on Fountain Pen Network along with the photos…and my Hari…a fellow fountain pen and watch enthusiast and fellow FNPer had written an enthusiastic response to my post and also posted photos of the Misak pens he had acquired…I thought his photos of his pens would give a sense of completeness to this present series on Misak pens…I asked his permission to have them on my blog and he agreed enthusiastically to this idea... so…here are the photos of Hari’s Misaks with the description in his own words…

Jai,

Thank you for taking the time to finally document the legendary Hyderabadi Misak pens.  Very little is known about them other than what you have so nicely presented. 

I own 4 Misaks. Here are some pictures:

The very first one that I bought from the now untraceable shop on RP road...

The same pen...uncapped...

Misak (Regd) stamped faintly on the barrel, hope I have been able to capture it adequately...

A Group photo of the others, the second one is courtesy you, thanks! The last two were kindly sent to me by another generous Hyderabadi FPNer whose FPN handle is anup.singh in Feb2010 that he had found in a shop at "Chandanagar” close to BHEL Township in Hyderabad for a princely sum of 15 Rupees each!!

Both 'Chandanagar' Misaks...uncapped...

The nibs are quite worn, but these are Misak branded nibs, also the clips have Misak on them...



Thank you Hari for your warm response to my post on FPN and the beautiful photos of your Misaks...it was a pleasure having you as a guest on my blog...

Tuesday, October 30, 2012

In search of the nostalgic MISAK Fountain Pen (in Hyderabad, India)...PART 2

This was truly unreal...I had to hide my excitement... I tried to look nonchalant... I opened the caps one by one...the first FP had a gold band on the cap...the nib had Misak on it...wonderful...the second one had no cap band... this nib also had Misak on it...more wonderful...the third one with the arrow clip turned out to be a ball pen with an ‘ancient’ looking refill still in it...no harm... it is always nice to have a complete range of a pen brand, if possible...in fact, I did not want to leave any Misak behind...I then asked him some general questions about the Misak brand...he said it was a very popular brand in Hyderabad at one point of time and of course now it is closed and the owner has migrated to the US or Dubai, he was not sure... very casually, I asked him the price of these 3 pens...by now I think he realised that I was hooked...and told me that he is offering me these pens at cost price, although these are now antique pieces...and he can ask for more...I just smiled...and he offered me each pen at cost price...which was fabulous...

Now I had 3 Misaks...two FPs with custom Misak nibs, something I was searching for...the ball-pen added variety...and there was a tremendous sense of satisfaction...as if I had made the pens myself...

What is special about these pens? Nothing much...they are simple looking ebonite FPs with no frills or fuss...but for a whole generation of Hyderabadis...Misak meant ‘fountain pens’... 

And this happened around a year ago and I had wanted to write about my search and post pictures of my Misaks...and it never seemed to happen...a couple of weeks ago, I finally decided to create my Misak post...and as some kind of preparatory work, wanted to see if I can get some information on the Internet (though I have scoured the net many times earlier in search of information on Misak...)...and I found a piece of conversation (in a Hyderabadi forum chat) between two Hyderabadis...one living in Chicago and the other in Hyderabad...I have not mentioned their names here for obvious reasons...

The Hyderabadi living in Chicago writes in a nostalgic mood (in English transcribed Urdu) about how in the 1960s there was a shop in Putli Bawli called the Misak Pen Store and the pens sold here were inexpensive...Mr Kasim Husain was the owner of this pen store and that the name of pen was the reverse of his name...KASIM...MISAK...and because the pens were inexpensive, they were very popular and the owner used to repair pens for free in his shop...now I think the shop is closed...

The one in Hyderabad responds to this and writes in English that Misak Pens were popular in his school too... and that he was thankful for some of the useful details supplied by his compatriot in Chicago...he goes on to write that some samples of Misak could still be available in one of the book shops in Charminar area and that he wanted to buy one and keep it as a collectible... but had forgotten...and now this nostalgic reminiscence from Chicago has refreshed his memory and he offers to buy one and send it across to Chicago as a gift...

Well...after this very long narrative...here are the pictures...

The ‘original’ Misaks...2 FPs and 1 ball-pen...

This is the FP with Misak only on the clip...

Misak 1 – The one with the broad gold band on the cap...

The clip of the same pen...

Aha...the nib...with Misak on it...

Cap and nib
The Misak without the Misak nib...
Yeah...it has got an Ambitious nib...
This picture is lovely...the name is etched very cleanly on the clip...

Misak 2 – the one without the cap band..

Misak 2 - clip with brand name...
The Misak ball-pen...

The arrow clip with Misak on it...

The ancient looking refill...I bought this pen just for that...

Thanks for all the patience...I hope you liked reading this as much as I enjoyed recounting this search...

Ok...here endeth Part 2 (with photos) as promised in Part 1...but there is a surprise...there is going to be another post on Misak...a kind of Part 3...this is going to be a guest post...'soon' is all I can say to 'when?'

Monday, October 29, 2012

In search of the nostalgic MISAK Fountain Pen (in Hyderabad, India)...PART 1


For old-timers in Hyderabad (India), ‘Misak Pens’ is a major nostalgia item among many other things Hyderabadi...this I came to know during my visits to Deccan Pen Stores when on more than one occasion a customer would come in asking for Misak Pen (and added ‘patte-wala’ pen, meaning ‘pen with nib,’ ‘patta’ being the local and/or traditional Hindi/Urdu word for ‘nib’), and the salesperson would pick out an ebonite fountain pen (a smaller sized brown mottled ebonite Deccan FP) and give it to him...and that person would go nostalgic and say things like ‘in those days we used to write with Misak Pens, and nowadays the pen is not easily available’... and surprisingly he would pay for the pen and take it...I didn’t know whether the customer knew that he was buying a Deccan FP...or whether he bothered about it at all...after a couple of such occasions, especially at the DPS Secunderabad branch, I realised that for the customer ‘Misak Pen’ meant an ‘ebonite pen,’ especially the brown mottled variety...and finding a brown mottled ebonite FP in a shop in Hyderabad itself was a big deal for the customer, which took him back to ‘uss zamana’ (those days)...

My own interest in procuring at least one Misak FP for my collection started with my friend and fellow FPNer, Hari’s response to one of the posts on Indian FPs on FPN...who informed me that he had managed to buy a couple of Misak FPs (probably the last pieces in that shop) from a shop somewhere near DPS Secunderabad and he had also mentioned the name of the shop (Gupta Pen Stores)...so, one evening, I went around that area looking for Gupta Pen Stores and found none...there was another pen shop nearby and I enquired there and the husband and wife duo (owners presumably) there told me that they no longer have any ebonite pens to sell, let alone a Misak FP...I went to DPS Secunderabad and asked them about the shop...Zubair tried to remember and told me that there is no such shop in the vicinity and there could be a shop similarly named somewhere in the older part of the city... I was disappointed...I asked Hari and he confirmed the name of the shop and the location...maybe I missed it...

Hari is the main source of information on FPs for me and he told me that he had also tried to find out about Misak Pens on the internet and found an address in Hyderabad where the Misak Pens shop/manufacturing unit is located...a place called Chappal Bazar...he promptly wrote a letter to the owner asking him about the brand and if they had any stocks left, but disappointingly and unfortunately the letter came back with ‘addressee not found’ scrawled on the cover...

Hari had also informed me that he had got to know that the brand name ‘MISAK’ is actually the name of the owner written in reverse...KASIM...maybe the Deccan people told him this... and he was also informed that Misak Pens is closed now and no more Misaks are being made...

The search for Misak was getting more and more disappointing...at that point in time, I used to enquire at every suitably old looking stationery shop for Misak pens...and the generally common answer I’d get was a nostalgic one tinged with regret...‘arre saab, Hyderabad mein bahut chalta tha Misak Pena-n...bandh ho gaya ab...koi bhi patte ka pen istemaal nahin karrein...’ (oh sir, Misak pens used to be very popular in Hyderabad...it is closed now...nobody uses ‘nib’ pens anymore...)

The night has to end sometime...and that daybreak happened one innocuous day when on my rounds checking old looking stationery shops, I found a really shabby looking shop in a very busy general shopping area...all kinds of note books, ledger books, cardboard boxes, stationery boxes, paper sheets, stacked here and there...it looked like an angry bull had entered the shop... I asked the man at the counter if he had any fountain pens...he showed me some cheap plastic ones...I asked for ebonite FPs...and he brought out a cardboard pen box and showed me some ebonite pens...I read the name on the clip...MISAK...oh man oh man oh man... I forgave the shop for looking so shabby...only if more shops were shabby, but held old treasures...well, I am getting ahead of myself here...he had some 6 similar looking thick mottled brown ebonite pens with the name MISAK on the clip...I opened the cap and looked at the nib... disappointment... not a Misak nib...the immediate conclusion was ‘not an original Misak’... I asked the person about the pen and asked him if these were new...he said they were new pens...I then told him that I had heard that Misak had closed shop long back... ‘yes, indeed,’ he said... ‘but one of my customers is based in the US and had asked me to locate some Misak pens for him...I managed to locate somebody in the family and they made me a small batch of FPs...and these 6 are the last ones...’ I didn’t want to ask any further questions... I checked all the 6 pens for nib smoothness and bought 4...at least the clip has MISAK on it...some consolation...

But as you can see, I was not satisfied...the soul of the pen was missing...and it was a kind of a reminder...‘your search doesn’t endeth here’... I left it at that... no point in running after a mirage...or a misak...for that matter...

It was not that easy, you see, to dismiss Misak totally out of my mind...though the spirit was willing, the flesh was weak and so the intensity got dimmed a bit... and all this was happening around two and a half years ago... and one evening I was in an auto-rickshaw travelling towards the older part of the city...the driver was somebody whom I engaged regularly for my book and pen explorations around the city and he knew my regular shops and my strange hobbies...there is this stationery shop which looked old enough and I had always wanted to stop and ask if they had any FPs...and moreover, the board had ‘Pen’ and Stationery on it, so that gave me some more hope...so on this day, I asked my driver to stop near the shop...there was a middle-aged gentleman manning the shop and I asked him if he had any FPs...he gave me the familiar nostalgia-laden answer...I asked him if he had any ebonite FPs from the olden days...he said ‘no’... and then he stopped himself for a second and said ‘let me see’...aha... a sliver of light seemed to appear at the end of the tunnel...I waited with bated breath...he seemed to be searching for something and seemed to have found it and came up with a dusty plastic pen folder...he then dusted it with a cloth...suspense was killing me...arre, clean it later, na...he then unzipped the folder and there were 4 pens there...3 of them mottled brown ebonite pens... he handed me the pens... did my heart skip a beat?...ALL THREE BROWN MOTTLED EBONITES WERE MISAKs...


(The rest of the narrative and pictures in the next and last part...)

Sunday, October 21, 2012

Parkeraul at Best Books Sale...2nd visit this season...

The good people at Best Books sent me a text message informing me that their sale at YMCA Secunderabad would go on for some more time till October 15...I don't know why they wanted to extend the date...this time I found the sale boring...and managed with great difficulty to really ferret out the four books that I wrote about in my previous post...

During my first visit to their sale this time, I saw that they were setting up a kind of permanent second-hand (these days people use new coinages like 'once-used' and 'pre-used' and 'pre-owned' for the good old 'second-hand'!!!) books shop...Vinod also mentioned this in his post...but the shop was just about complete and books were scattered here and there...and I realised that the reason I didn't find books of any of my favourite authors in the sale hall was because they were all piled up here in this new location...

I think Best Books decided to set up a permanent shop in the Secunderabad area is because they feel their Secunderabad-based customers who visit their bi-annual sale at YMCA have now started visiting Frankfurt Foreign Book Sale a couple of kilometres away down the same road and M R Books further down Begumpet Road...and these two are permanent shops (almost!!)...

I didn't have much hope when I set out to visit BBS a second time this time...and as anticipated, I didn't find anything interesting (i.e., whatever I was looking for)...and came out hurriedly and saw that their 'permanent' shop at the other end (in the same compound) looked functional and went there...and here I started feeling comfortable...piles and piles of pulp...he he he...and I was confident that I would find at least some books...and I was not disappointed...but I was almost...until I spied two moderate piles of books hidden behind two slightly taller piles...aha...these two moderate piles of books were all Parker books...good only... and there were many Spenser series books...I put aside four so far un-read Spenser books from the two piles...Crimson Joy, Judas Goat, Mortal Stakes, and Sudden Mischief...


4 Spensers and 2 Stones


But was I happy?...no no no...I felt this was such a 'piddi' haul, taking my previous unsatisfactory visit also into account...but no more un-read Parkers in the two piles...I searched, but no Rankins either...neither was there any Peter Robinsons...I saw some Le Carres, but I had not done my homework...so, I didnt want to go for a blind shot...I went back to the now-considerably smaller Parker piles...and decided to go against form and pick up two non-Spenser Parkers...Trouble in Paradise and Night Passage...two Jesse Stone novels...I hadnt read any Jesse Stone novels before and I looked up the name on...what else?... wikipedia!!...and read that this fictional detective character is completely different from Spenser and a 'deeply troubled man'...and comparing Stone to Spenser, Parker said in an interview, "Jesse is a much more damaged individual who is coming to terms with himself as he goes along..."  aah...that sounds promising...I kind of like Rankin's Inspector Rebus, another troubled detective...who chases trouble until it plunges is claws on his back and hangs on there...so, Jesse Stone is troubled!!!  Chalo dekhte hain...I am just one nove...no, half a novel...away from finding out...

It is around eight days since that Parkeraul...and I have finished three Spenser-Parkers already and on to my fourth...Mortal Stakes...and then I go on to visit the 'troubled and damaged' Jesse Stone getting to trouble in paradise... 

Wednesday, October 3, 2012

A chota catch at Best Books Sale...


I have had many good hauls at the Best Books Sale, which takes place twice a year at YMCA, Secunderabad...and this time too I was waiting for their text message announcing their sale...but I got to know of the sale through Vinod's post first...I thought I'd visit them on the first day, but couldn't make it...and so, on the second day I was able to go there...of course, I had planned what to look out for...books of my favourite crime fiction writers Robert Parkers, Peter Robinson, Ian Rankin...I had the list of books of these writers that I already have and so I was prepared...I also wanted to look out for some humour books...and anything else that caught my fancy...but all this preparation went in vain...

Vinod's post informed me that the Best Books guys were planning a permanent set-up at YMCA premises... when I reached there on the second day, I saw that they had already had their permanent shop up and running and the books were stacked too...but I went into the hall of sale first and looked around...didn't find the usual books at their usual places...what to do now...?  I presumed they'd have shifted all their fiction titles to the permanent shop in the same premises...and made a mental note to check the shop on my way out...

With very little enthusiasm, I went around and selected four books...Umberto Eco's The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana, Dave Barry's Book of Bad Songs, Don't Get Mad, Get Even...A Manual for Retaliation by Alan Abel, and The Complete Monty Python's Flying Circus Vol. 2...I like Eco's novels and I had purchased The Mysterious Flame... earlier and had enjoyed reading it...a friend of mine, also an Eco fan, borrowed it from me and lost it while shifting residence...what to do...I had contemplated buying another copy long to fill the Eco gap...I must have forgotten...and so when I saw this nice copy with clear illustrations I picked it up...

I didn't want to buy another Dave Barry book, though there were lots of them lying around in the humour section...I didn't enjoy the last two Dave Barry books that I bought at the previous Best Books sale...Dave Barry's Guide to Life and Dave Barry Slept Here...too gimmicky I thought...I was angry with Dave Barry...but since I was getting nowhere, I took a peek at the titles and flipped the pages...and decided to go with the Book of Bad Songs...it is a small book...big fonts...and won't take me long to finish...ha ha ha...

The same friend who lost The Mysterious Queen... would often talk about the Monty Python series and their strange (surreal?) brand of comedy and I remembered him when I saw The Complete Monty Python's Flying Circus Vol. 2 and thought this would be a good addition…and then just for kicks I picked up Don't Get Mad, Get Even...A Manual for Retaliation by Alan Abel…it has got these sometimes funny ‘retaliatory’ anecdotes…a couple of pages each…easy to read…and here endeth my story of my haul at the recent sale of Best Books…