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Business News/ Mint-lounge / Mint-on-sunday/  Letter from a stationery cupboard
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Letter from a stationery cupboard

Mere words are not enough to describe my love for stationery. But I shall try.

Photo: iStockPremium
Photo: iStock

Readers, this weekend I write to you in a mood of great ecstasy. This is because I have just become the proud owner of an Optima 40 Compact stapler manufactured by the highly regarded company Rexel. The Optima 40, as the name suggests, is designed to effortlessly staple together up to 40 sheets of paper. And you can do this in two ways. For one, you can square out the sheets of paper neatly and hold them in one hand while wielding the stapler in the other. And staple mid-air. 

Or—Indian bank branch cashier style—you can place the stapler on the table, insert the sheets between the spring-loaded pad and the mouth of the device, and give it a resounding and satisfying thwack on the top with the palm of your hand. 

And it staples beautifully. Even if I use the regular supermarket staples I always have in my cupboard. For optimum stapling pleasure the brand encourages customers to buy its high-end staples. 

But what kind of mad person spends hard-earned cash money on high-end luxury staples? 

I am that kind of person. I have already ordered it. In fact the Amazon guy delivered the staples yesterday. They came in a wonderfully shiny aluminium box. I have placed the box in the "premium" products section of my stationery cupboard. 

You see, I love stationery. I love it. I adore it. I spend inordinate amounts of money on it. I can never have enough. 

Stationery is the best. 

***

It all began, I think, when I was a small schoolchild and often spent afternoons in my dad’s office during the summer vacations. This was an office in Abu Dhabi. I was, like any self-respecting Indian, an NRI. My dad worked for an Emirati conglomerate that had its fingers in all kinds of business from oil field supplies to agriculture via tear gas cylinders, real estate, gas turbines and, most important of all, General Motors cars and trucks.

They did everything and dad did all kinds of things for them: human resources, investing, finances, compliance, administration, compensation. I once remember walking into his office one afternoon, just before closing time, and seeing him sitting in front of an Emirati customer, counting out wads of cash. The guy had decided to buy a top-of-the-line GMC truck in cash. 

This was, of course, long before the tidal wave of MBAs and subject-area specialists washed over the Middle East and displaced all the Malayalis with degrees in botany and zoology who were entrusted with entire multi-vertical organizations. 

By virtue of his job, my dad’s workstation usually sat next to the stationery warehouse. 

What a wonderland of delights it was. Scotch tape in every imaginable configuration. Post-Its in every combination of colour and size. Labelling machines, legal pads, pens, pencils, correction pens, little memo blocks and mountains of erasers. I spent hours walking up down the aisles looking, touching, probing and, most of all, inhaling the aroma of virgin stationery. Readers who have the same weakness for stationery can attest to the heady aroma of stacks of copier paper, bottles of ink, vials of correction fluid and cartons of pencils. 

I was hooked in my childhood and the addiction has never left me. 

To this day I continue to accumulate notebooks, pens, pencils and sticky notes with alarming frequency. During my last house-move I weighed in a box of just notebooks—all unused—at around 15 kilos. 

There is something bewitching about the sight of a new, unused notebook. How does one resist? And if you have a new notebook how can you not have a new pen to go with it? Which is why I have a cupboard in my office bursting at the seams with notebooks from Moleskine, Leuchtturm and Field Notes, and pens by Pilot, Lamy and, of course, Caran D’Ache. 

The Caran D’Ache 849 is perhaps the finest ballpoint pen I have ever used. I cannot, just cannot, recommend it enough. It is superb. Lamy is great for fountain pens, of course. But I am also very fond of those Chinese Hero pens and the dirt-cheap schoolchild fountain pens made by the Migros chains of supermarkets in Switzerland. Field Notes is hard to beat for notebooks. Though I am also entirely in love with Muji’s notebooks. (In fact I think I like everything Muji except their clothes. Which are clearly not meant for chunky men with robust builds.) 

But of all my notebooks, my favourite is one I bought from the Vitra museum in the German town of Weil am Rhein, just on the other side of the Swiss border near Basel. They sell these notebooks inspired by the architecture of Japan’s Tadao Ando. 

Some of you are thinking: What the hell is wrong with you man? These are just pens and papers and staplers. Who even needs these things in 2017. 

You guys will never understand. You monsters.

Letter From... is Mint on Sunday’s antidote to boring editor’s columns. Each week, one of our editors—Sidin Vadukut in London and Arun Janardhan in Mumbai—will send dispatches on places, people and institutions that are worth ruminating about on the weekend. 

Comments are welcome at feedback@livemint.com

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Published: 19 Aug 2017, 11:23 PM IST
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