Monday Jul 08, 2024
Monday Jul 08, 2024
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over the years, accompanying my father, always dangling close to his heart and playing a huge and ubiquitous role in the unfolding of our lives. Now, nearly two decades after his passing, it was mine.
And as any good son who inherited a precious family heirloom would do, I Googled it! Turns out, this was no ordinary pen; and was richly deserving of all the praises sung by its doting original owner.
One of the most robust and practical writing instruments ever made, it was once voted the fourth best industrial design of the 20th century. It was named ‘51’ to mark the year 1939, the Parker Pen Company’s 51st year of existence. The pen’s resemblance to the P-51 Mustang, a fighter plane used extensively during World War II, had no bearing on its name, though some of its fans still make the comparison.
From its inception, Parker had big plans for the 51. So by giving the pen a number instead of a name, Parker avoided the problem of translating a name into other languages, enabling rapid marketing of the product in countries around the world.
Illustrious users
The venerable pen has an impressive catalogue of illustrious users. They say US General Douglas MacArthur used a Parker 51 to sign the Japanese surrender in 1945; and a popular photograph exists of General Dwight Eisenhower and later President, holding two Parker 51s in a V for the victory in Europe in 1944.
"For someone who didn’t spend too much time with books, he was remarkably aware of the power of the written word, no doubt aptly supported by his faithful pen. He wrote quite well, a fact that began to dawn on me whenever I received his letters during my university years overseas. Looking back, I am so glad we didn’t have e-mail and texting those days, which would have limited our correspondence to typo-ridden one-liners ending with a smiley face! Unfortunately, that will be the legacy I will be handing over to my own son"
British fiction writer Sir Arthur Conan-Doyle apparently used a 51, as did Indian writer R.K. Narayan of Malgudi fame. Chiang Kai-Shek, the founder of Taiwan, used one too. Among the lesser known aficionados of the Parker 51 was my father. And therein lies my relationship with a fountain pen that has now come full-circle.
Host of memories
The old writing instrument now sits proudly atop my desk at home, far away from its original environs on the other side of the globe. And with 
every glance, it incites a host of memories that help me visualise the unfolding of my own life. Funny I should attribute such credit to a fountain pen; but in retrospect, the pen has come to epitomise by father’s place in my life.
Back in the day in boarding school, Sunday was letter writing and letter receiving day. My letters home always revolved around the urgent need for pocket money and how desperately my friends and I were in need of homemade rice packets. My father would take time from his busy business activities to frequently pen a reply to these calls for help.
Putting his Parker 51 to paper, he would make eloquent statements about the need to experience life’s challenges and forge ahead to make something of one’s self, much like he had when he arrived in Kegalle with a fountain pen and an undetermined sum of money in his pocket.
Of course the first thing I would look for inside the brown envelope from home was for a crisp two rupee note, which back in the day, could buy you a mini feast at the college tuck shop, and then some. While I marvelled at his cursive penmanship, the advice itself would usually be skimmed over fairly quickly. Priorities are different when you are eleven.
Power of the written word
For someone who didn’t spend too much time with books, he was remarkably aware of the power of the written word, no doubt aptly supported by his faithful pen. He wrote quite well, a fact that began to dawn on me whenever I received his letters during my university years overseas. Looking back, I am so glad we didn’t have e-mail and texting those days, which would have limited our correspondence to typo-ridden one-liners ending with a smiley face! Unfortunately, that will be the legacy I will be handing over to my own son.
He would write elaborately, not about goings-on around the family, but about the monumental developments that would rock Sri Lankan society with alarming frequency. Later on, working as a journalist in Sri Lanka, I myself would learn to grudgingly welcome, as a fact-of-life, the chaos that unfolded around our lives, all of which provided potent material for writers.
Citizen journalism
I was actually introduced to ‘citizen journalism’ through the letters of my father. Shortly after the 1977 general election, a letter from him spelled disbelief at the decimation of Sirima Bandaranaike’s SLFP at the hands of J.R. Jayewardene and the UNP. An SLFP loyalist to his death, he would go on to lament the suspension of Mrs. Bandaranaike’s civil rights and rightly argued about the need to uphold people’s democratic rights, when much of the country was caught up with the windfall from the “open economy” of the day.
In another letter was a clipping of a photograph from the Daily News which showed President Jayewardene wearing the traditional amude when 
he participated in a national Wap Magul ceremony with members of his Cabinet. Needless to say, he had some saucy comments about JR’s bare buttocks and chastised the Daily News for displaying them on its front page for the whole world to see. It wasn’t until I started to work for the Daily News many years later that his affection for the paper returned.
Another observation attributed to his pen was when he mused “how in this majority Sinhala nation, a Tamil party would become the official opposition,” which was a reference to the TULF’s rise to power in ’77. As many others of his generation, he could not grasp the reality of this watershed development in our country’s political history. He was equally dumbfounded when the Sixth Amendment brought in by the Jayewardene administration virtually outlawed the TULF and left Sri Lanka’s Tamils without political representation. It didn’t take me long to understand that my father was a wise man.
More agonising letters would follow. His heartache at the bloodbath of Black July 1983; and how he may have even saved some people, when he protected them from marauding mobs. His faith in humanity had taken a beating and he advised me to be prepared to face a different country if I were to return. I did and experienced worse.
Peculiar relationship
The pen would accompany him and us through our lives. Weddings, funerals and all other good and bad times that life would throw at us. It probably played a small role in all of them. And it was most likely in his possession the night he passed away.
And now it has begun a rather peculiar relationship with me. For like most people of this day and age, I write on a computer and use multiple electronic devices to communicate with my loved ones. Such as “I gonna be late today” to my wife and “dinner ready. come down now” to my son. What would be the role of a fountain pen in such a society, I wonder.
The answer lies in my attachment not to the instrument itself, but to my relationship to its owner whose blood runs through my own instruments. It is about what he communicated to me, obviously sans such deep analysis, of how he felt of the world around him. For me, the pen is a pale shadow of a man whose life and times had a profound impact on my own.
I shall keep the old 51; and on a snowy Canadian evening, will once again take it for a spin down memory lane!
(The writer is a former journalist in mainstream media and now lives in Canada. He could be reached via email [email protected].)
