As a young boy, he adored great men with untiring intellect and ‘golden pens with ink that never dried out’. He dreamt of possessing that pen. The fascination for pens never left him. He went on collecting them and today K Kunhikrishnan, former Deputy Director General of Doordarshan and an author, is the proud owner of over 200 pens. A chapter (‘Penakal, Penakal’) of his memoir ‘Ninavinte Nanavukal’ brought out by Mathrubhumi Books is enough and more to throw light on his passion. It travels through his collection, the special ones and those he lost, besides the history and varieties of pens. ‘Many consider pen-collectors crazy. The reply would be, it is human to have some kind of desire in life’, he writes. His ‘acrobatics’ with steel pens (which had to be dipped in ink) and the happiness he felt when he got a set from his uncle (late Raman Nambiar) have been put down beautifully in the book. Today he has a vintage steel pen and ink pot set gifted by his elder son Jayadeep Krishnan in his collection.He writes about how jealous he felt when his teachers in school complimented a classmate’s hand writing mainly because she had a beautiful costly pen and of the costly Parker pen of another classmate of his MSc years, who too had an excellent hand writing. The ‘Asoka’ brand, which cost Re 1 that he regularly used, the Black Bird pen which his friend used to give him to write and the first and last pen he found abandoned on the road have found their way into the book. The oldest in the collection is a Parker (Model 51) gifted in 1970 by author Vilasini (M K Menon). Vilasini, who was in Singapore, had sent him the pen after reading Kunhikrishnan’s review of his novel. “When I got it, I had to pay ` 64 as customs duty, which was 1/5th of my salary.” After some 10 to 15 years of use, it fell down and the nib broke. It was many years later that he could repair it at a shop in Bangalore.The brands Parker, Cross, Mont Blanc, Cartier, Dupont, Lamy, Pelikan, Sheaffer, D’Zario, Caran d’Ache, D’Zario and Harry Winston have made it to his collection. “I use most of them and the one I like most is a Cartier which I bought. It is sleek and smooth.”“It was M T Vasudevan Nair who first gave me a Cross pen, after his foreign trip. Later, whenever he went abroad, he has brought back pens for me.” A Cross pen gifted by actor K P Ummar, Cross ballpoint pens gifted by Shaji N Karun, Punathil Kunhabdullah, dance exponent Dhananjayan, actor Rajendran and Akbar Ali, a Harry Winston gifted by Mammootty, a Parker given by actor Madhu and a Sheaffer given to him by celebrated journalist late John Ulahannan are among the special ones. “It was I who had sent John to Amman to cover the Kuwait War and he came back with a Sheaffer.” The costliest is the ruby-studded Cartier, a gift from the French government. Repairing the costly pens is an equally costly affair, he adds.He felt really special when his wife Ragini gifted a Dupont pen on their 25th anniversary “though she has little idea about pens,” he laughs. “On our last wedding anniversary, she gifted a Tommy Hilfiger. I was also moved when Jayadeep gifted a Cross pen with his first salary.” He also gifted a Lamy pen on his father’s 60th birthday. Kunhikrishnan cherishes the beautiful box gifted by Jayadeep and his wife Lakshmi for the safekeeping of pens. “Our younger son (Viswanath Krishnan) keeps saying that he would like to inherit my books and pens!,” Kunhikrishnan shares with a smile.
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