The key turns with clockwork precision and the lock unlocks with a familiar click to reveal a portal where one feels as if one has travelled back in time. Such is the charm of the tiny workshop-cum-office that Dilip Basak calls his own. The eldest of four siblings, he was in his teens when he dropped out of school and started helping his father in his trade as a pen-mender.
Enter the narrow Debendra Ghosh Street in Bhowanipore and you will come across Electromech Vintage Fountain Pen Repair, one of the remaining few pen restoration centres, the only other one being the Pen Hospital on 9B Chowringhee Road, Esplanade.
“I was born in 1962. I have been coming here since I was in my teens,” said Dilip, who confessed to have slowed down considerably in the last few years. “I would fix around five-six pens daily earlier but now I can work on only three or four and focus on high-quality work.”
It was right after the 1975 Emergency that Dilip’s father started the shop. His father was uneducated and would do all sorts of menial jobs just to keep the family afloat. Fed up with picking up scraps, he decided to become an entrepreneur and hit upon the idea of fixing broken pens. Back in the day, the fountain pens were much in demand. Dilip’s shop, too, was born out of rejection — in those days, Chowringhee Pen Service owned by Bhobeshbabu was the biggest name in pen restoration. It employed some of the finest craftsmen in the trade. One day, Dilip’s father approached him for a job but was turned down. Hurt, Dilip’s father started his own concern.
Dilip has seen everything, from the heydays of fountain pen repairing in the late-1970s to the 1980s, the downturn in the 1990s, the collapse that followed and now, a resurrection
Dilip took over the business after the latter’s death and went on to become a pen messiah of sorts. He takes condemned fountain pens and restores them to their former glory. He has painstakingly brought back to life a Mont Blanc 149. From the filling mechanism to the wrecked body, everything was fitted to perfection – using his antediluvian lathe machine depending on just his naked eyes.
The first pen Dilip fixed was a Rs 4 Parker, for which he charged Re 1. Swiss Military, Pilot and Waterman pens have regularly found themselves serviced in Dilip’s hands. During his lifetime, he must have restored more than 50,000 pens. From Parkers and Sheaffers to rare Indian makes and one extremely special Montblanc Safety Senior. But do people pay to get their pens fixed? “They don’t have a choice, and neither do I,” confirms Dilip. His customers come from all over, even from as far as Chennai and Mumbai.
Many famous personalities have got their pens fixed by Dilip. The list includes Satyajit Ray, former chief minister Jyoti Basu, high court judges and even some staff of Raj Bhavan.
Dilip has seen everything, from the heydays of fountain pen repairing in the late-1970s to the 1980s, the downturn in the 1990s, the collapse that followed and now, a resurrection.
Today, thanks to the Internet, one can easily tell the difference between chalk and cheese, the connoisseurs from the newbies. A new generation has discovered a newfound interest in fountain pen and mechanical pencil collection. How long this interest would remain is a different question altogether. Maybe writing as an art, thanks to tools like ChatGPT, will become obsolete. Or, maybe there’s hope, for a fresh breed of writers furiously seeking originality, hungry to make a mark. Whatever be the case, Dilip Basak will be there to restore their seemingly irreparable fountain pens.