Of fountain pens and stained uniforms in Bengaluru

For old-timers like me, the Bengaluru of yore holds a special place in our hearts. We lived in Fraser Town in the cantonment area. Most kids would ride to the school on bicycle. These leisurely rides to school, which was situated on Spencer Road, and the scratch of fountain pens on paper, defined those days.

Sometimes when our fountain pens ran out of ink, we would head to a nearby stationery shop to refill them. The shopkeeper filled the empty cartridges with ink from an inkpot using an ink filler. The price was a steal at 3 paise per cartridge.

The dark blue ink from our fountain pens frequently stained our school uniforms, leaving marks that resisted even the most earnest scrubbing. The introduction of ballpoint pens was nothing short of revolutionary.

The stationery shop downed its shutters decades ago; the bungalow where we lived transformed into an apartment complex. The school still exists but the single-storey building has given way to additional floors to accommodate more pupils. Price of development! But the memories still exist in our hearts.

NJ Ravi Chander, Bengaluru