SULEKHA: A SWADESHI INK FLOWS AGAIN

It was one of the earliest fountain pen inks made in India. Bengal's labour militancy forced the company shut in 1991. There is a colourful revival on now

- BIBEK DEBROY

RECENTLY, I went on a visit to Kolkata and rediscovered Sulekha. Depending on which part of India you grew up in, at one point, Sulekha was a household name. Those were the days of fountain pens and ink. Who cares about fountain pens today? In this electronic world, writing is fast dying out. To the extent that writing on paper remains, but writing instruments mean ballpoint and gel pens. Fountain pens have a whiff of nostalgia about them. But rarely do people use them.

While that statement is generally true, some fountain pen connoisseurs and aficionados still remain. There is a market, limited though it is, for fountain pens and ink. Who caters to that market? What fountain pen ink do people buy? Depending on taste—Pilot, Waterman, Lamy, Mont Blanc, Sailor, Diamine, Noodlers and so on. (Sheaffer is now Indian, having been acquired by William Penn.)

What is a fountain pen? Unlike dip pens of the past, a fountain pen possesses an internal reservoir of ink. You don't need to dip the pen into an ink pot. Once upon a time, fountain pens needed 'eye-droppers'. (They are still available.) You use a dropper to directly fill ink into the barrel. Smudges in pockets and inky fingers are associated with such eye-droppers. These days, it is either a cartridge or a convertor. A cartridge is plug-and-play and is often proprietary, not interchangeable between one pen and another. With a cartridge, there is no choice over the ink. One is stuck with whatever the cartridge-maker provides. That's the reason many people prefer converters, where the ink goes into a tube-like gadget.