Recently, I went on a visit to Kolkata and rediscovered Sulekha. Depending on which part of India you grew up in, at one point, Sulekha was a household name. Those were the days of fountain pens and ink. Who cares about fountain pens today? In this electronic world, writing is fast dying out. To the extent that writing on paper remains, but writing instruments mean ballpoint and gel pens. Fountain pens have a whiff of nostalgia about them. But rarely do people use them.
While that statement is generally true, some fountain pen connoisseurs and aficionados still remain. There is a market, limited though it is, for fountain pens and ink. Who caters to that market? What fountain pen ink do people buy? Depending on taste—Pilot, Waterman, Lamy, Mont Blanc, Sailor, Diamine, Noodlers and so on. (Sheaffer is now Indian, having been acquired by William Penn.)
What is a fountain pen? Unlike dip pens of the past, a fountain pen possesses an internal reservoir of ink. You don’t need to dip the pen into an ink pot. Once upon a time, fountain pens needed ‘eye-droppers’. (They are still available.) You use a dropper to directly fill ink into the barrel. Smudges in pockets and inky fingers are associated with such eye-droppers. These days, it is either a cartridge or a convertor. A cartridge is plug-and-play and is often proprietary, not interchangeable between one pen and another. With a cartridge, there is no choice over the ink. One is stuck with whatever the cartridge-maker provides. That’s the reason many people prefer converters, where the ink goes into a tube-like gadget.
Sheaffer apart, which are the Indian ink makers and can they hold up to global competition? Bril, Sulekha, Camlin, Syahi, Krishna—you take your pick. One of the earliest was Sulekha, identified with the swadeshi movement. Satish Chandra Dasgupta had retired as chief chemist of Bengal Chemicals. Circa 1932, Mahatma Gandhi requested him to make a swadeshi ink. Satish Chandra came up with an ink named ‘Krishnadhara’, meaning black flow. It was sold through khadi outlets.
Dasgupta passed on the recipe to two brothers, Shankaracharya Maitra and Nani Gopal Maitra, for better commercial production. Thus, the manufacturing unit was set up as Sulekha Works in Rajshahi (now in Bangladesh) in 1934. Sulekha means ‘beautiful writing’. There is an urban legend that the name was suggested by Rabindranath Tagore. But there is no evidence to substantiate this. In the late 1930s, Sulekha moved to Kolkata. There is a place in Jadavpur in South Kolkata famous as ‘Sulekha More’, or, Sulekha Crossroads.
When we were in school, Sulekha was the ubiquitous ink. Each bottle of ‘Royal Blue’ was sold with a photograph of Gandhiji on the package. Sulekha also exported ink and set up factories on a turnkey basis in African countries. There is a report that says, in the early 1980s, Sulekha had a market share of 89 percent for ink in eastern India.
Indeed, the ‘favourite’ ink varied, depending on the part of the country and the age profile of the respondent. Some will say Quink, others Camlin.
The founder of Camlin Subhash Dandekar recently passed away. Before the advent of liquid ink, all ink used to be in the form of dust and tablets to be dissolved in water to make ink. The tablets originally made by Camlin used to be called Horse. That was later changed to Camel to convey the impression of lasting a long time, since a camel can survive without water for a long period of time. Camel plus ink became Camlin.
In common with other entrepreneurship in West Bengal, from the late 1970s, thanks to labour militancy, enterprises were hounded out and there was capital flight. It was no different with Sulekha. All production was suspended in 1988 and the company went into liquidation in 1991. That was that. Sulekha became a part of history. Those who pass Sulekha More might not even recognise what the crossroads was named after.
I had some idea that liquidation proceedings were stayed by the Kolkata High Court in 2005 and Sulekha was reopened in 2006. Faced with competition, different pen and ink manufacturers reacted differently. Some closed down completely. Others diversified into stationery and unrelated products. Sulekha went into home care products and solar power.
What I didn’t know, until my recent visit, is that the last four years have brought about a complete transformation. The production of ink has exploded and is doing well, with exports to neighbouring countries too. The range on offer is mind-boggling. I think there are more than 40 shades.
There is a myth that Indian-made ink isn’t good for expensive fountain pens. For years, I have used Indian-made ink in my pens and they are none the worse. I am told the new Sulekha inks—there is even a permanent ink that does not wash away with water—can match the best in the world in terms of quality.
The bogey, usually, is Chinese competition. In the case of ink, there isn’t any. The Chinese quality is vastly inferior. In the Sulekha story, there is a broader message of revival of entrepreneurship in West Bengal, which runs contrary to the general trend. I hope it lasts.
But Sulekha didn’t only make ink. It also made pens, though they were never as ubiquitous as the ink. Nor did Sulekha pursue registration of trademarks on writing instruments as vigorously as it did for ink. Therefore, some ‘Sulekha’ pens floated around that were not the genuine stuff. However, the genuine stuff has started again.
Fountain pens have different price bands. At the entry level, there is indeed the bogey of Chinese competition. Most pen manufacturers have been, and continue to be, small enterprises. This makes it impossible for them to invest in technology or marketing and distribution, or generate large volumes. At that level, there are a handful of pen makers who can match the Chinese on price, if not design. Sulekha has now joined that bandwagon. I tried out a few Sulekha pens and they are decent enough.
(Views are personal)
Bibek Debroy | Chairman, Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister