School students carrying small ink bottles with screwed lids to their annual exams was a common sight in the 1940s. A penholder with a detachable nib, a cardboard to provide a smooth surface for the answer sheet and a blotting paper—an unfailing accompaniment to the ink bottle to absorb the excess of ink from the answer sheet wherever necessary—were also carried by students appearing for school examinations. The fountain pen was a status symbol; students from affluent families who were very few in number used it.
Cheesed off with the number of ink bottles I had been breaking (of course accidentally), my soiled shirts and blue digital extremities, my dad gifted me something queer. That was a strong and hard ink bottle with special characteristics. It was a thick, double-walled glass bottle with its bottom caved in to form a contour inside and the sidewall folded inwards to contain the ink inside. The ink remained safe in the bottle regardless of the style of holding it.
It was the first day of our annual exam. The year was 1945 and I was a fourth grader. Catching sight of the odd item with me, my classmates environed me soon. Rather than discussing the examination of the day, they started asking me in a quizzical manner about my odd ink bottle when I shared with them its special features. One of them upturned it with a tremulous hand to confirm my descriptions of it. Strewth! Not a drop could they find flowing out of it.
Another one tumbled it down the ground to verify its peculiar features and finding not a spot of its content anywhere around, hooped with joy hollering, Jings! The next one took it from him, tossed it up a tad and yelled, “my stars” as it landed back into his hands to the utter surprise of everyone around without even a drop spilling out.
The lidless bottle with the fluid remaining intact in it no matter in whatever position it was held knocked them for six. “How will you use it?” one of them queried. “Same way as you use yours”, I replied unassumingly. I thanked God that none of them wanted me to get one akin to that.
Alas! With a heavy heart I had to part with the proud possession gifted by my dad when shifting to another house in the late forties. The robust, invulnerable ink bottle that let me carry the blue fluid to the examination hall for two years on the trot with not even a vestige of it splashing or spilling out of it slipped into a jumble in our house untraced, with its bright appearance lingering long in my memory.