I waited for the day I could start using pens. It was a big big thing! And when the day finally arrived, I went for pen shopping with my mother. We were supposed to use only ink pens. The journey started since.
I guess I was in 8th grade when one of close friends introduced me to cartridge ink pens. They were non-messy and the pens came in attractive colours. But honestly, I was never a big fan of ink pens. So, I waited when we would be allowed to use ball pens.
That day arrived too. And off I went for pen shopping. I have to confess, I am a shopaholic with a specific fetish for stationery. My grand-dad was in WHO and he used to get exclusive stationery which was unavailable in India. My grand-mom used to keep them locked in a closet. Similarly, my parents had unlimited quota of awesome stationery from their workplaces. My home was home to never ending, high quality stationery from Faber Castell, Hero, Parker, Cross and so on. Then there was my uncle who used to and still is in Merchant Navy. By the time he completed 30 years of his life, he had traveled almost the whole world. And the one thing he used to get me was stationery besides clothes. I remember once he had bought a beautiful pencil pouch which had an aquarium on its outside. There were fake fish and real water! There were some not-so-nice souls in my class who couldn't handle the master-piece. The result: When I came back after PT, it was cruelly cut with a blade and the pouch was no where near what it used to look like earlier. Lesson learnt...I never took expensive and exclusive stationery to school thereafter.
Maybe because of all the stationery I grew up with, I love them to the core even today. I have felt my mouth water when I see good stuff.
It was during graduation and post graduation, when there was too much writing, that I shifted over to pens which were between 5-10 bucks. It had to be good but cheap. So I shifted gears to cheaper pens, but I used to always look out for colourful pens. During post-grad, my bestie and I used to hunt all the stationery to get hold of pretty looking pens which wrote well. Trust me, it was fun!
After those days, I never really needed a lot of pens. But recently when I got back to teaching, I re-started writing A LOT. I mean...a lot! There have been times, when I have gobbled up 1 pen within a week. Soon, my entire stock of pens got over. (Yeah...I have STOCK of pens)
And that is when I decided to shop for pens again. The first thought which came to my mind was that I needed colourful pens. Because, we are supposed to use only blue or black colour for checking, the ink had to be blue but the outside colour had to pretty. I decided to ransack Flipkart. (Obviously) But sadly couldn't find colourful pens.
Today, being a holiday I was out running a few errands, and remembered to buy coconut from the local small grocery shop. I tried my luck and asked whether he had pens, and he produced a counter full of ball point pens. It did not matter that A and N were screaming for lollipops and chocolates. It did not matter that my mother was waiting in the car for like 15 minutes. All I saw was colours in every colour.
MY LOOT: I spent a whole 30 bucks on them!!!
There are a lot more in the shop, and I know where to go when I want pens now. Oh BTW, Happy Janmashtami! :D