Stationery stores, fountain pens and friendships

"...we spend too much time obsessing about finding "the one" and we forget that a best friend can be a lifelong love. There is a fundamental truth, comfort and joy having a best friend." says Sally Page in her emotional roller coaster of a novel titled "The Book of Beginnings". 

The book is a warm read about friendships. A single woman in her late 30s, a runaway vicar in her 50s and an elderly 70 something man living alone in London forge an interesting friendship. This book is from the point of view of the 30 something single woman Joanne Sorsby, who runs her uncle's stationery shop, and specialises in selling fountain pens. It traces the birth of this beautiful friendship between the trio, its warmth, its experiences and how it transforms the lives of these three people. 

This was one of the books gifted to me by my department colleagues when they gave me a heartfelt farewell. I had given them a list of books and this one was on the list. I put the book on the list based on just two points. The story is set in a stationery store and it deals with fountain pens. Stationery stores have always been fascinating to me. From high school days, my favourite past time has been visiting stationery stores and browsing the aisles. There used to be an interesting Landmark outlet in Nungambakkam, Chennai. 

I used to take the 17D bus every saturday afternoon after school and go there. Landmark was a book store and a stationery store. I used to enter the store around 2 PM and come out only after 6 PM. I knew every inch of that store, every section, every aisle. The hard-bound, spiral bound, soft bound, recycled paper notebooks, the ball point pens of various brands, pencils, erasers, sharpeners, rulers, boxes, pouches, all of them fascinate me. I was introduced to the collections of paper of various quality graded by "grams per square meter" or GSM indicating the thickness of the paper. There used to be paper exclusively for letter-writing purposes. Ink collections of various quality and colours used to be stocked in the shelves. I never bought anything, they were all expensive, and I was a routine school-goer who required nothing more than school assignment notebooks and regular fountain pen and ink. But I used to make a mental note to buy all of them 'some day'! The craze and excitement of hanging out in stationery stores did not die out over the years. 

Several years after that, I remember visiting the Staples store in Columbus, Ohio with my cousin. It was the same excitement of a stationery store, but this time the scale was huge. Stationery of all types available in a massive scale. My cousin took me to Staples store to get some supplies to make some Christmas gifts to friends. I remember walking through those massive shelves with absolute excitement. I wrote a few lines, set them on a colourful background, printed it in the computer in the store on photo-paper, and bought a frame into which I put it and gifted it to a few friends. Then I travelled to different cities in the US for interviewing for jobs. In Chicago, I discovered a small Barnes and Nobles book store in Oak Park. 

I would escape to this store on most afternoons and sit in the cozy comfort of a sofa with a book from the shelves. Not once did anyone ask me to buy the book I was reading or send me away because I did not buy the books! It was a norm to see many young college students collapsed in comfortable sofas all around the store with their faces buried deep inside some interesting books. The culture of book stores in B and N supported and encouraged reading, irrespective of whether it resulted in buying! There was a stationery outlet in the same store, again a place of comfort and excitement for me, in the cold and lonely city of Chicago. 

Even now one of my favourite hangouts is the Crosswords book and stationery outlets in the Express Avenue Mall in Chennai. The people in the store, know me very well! I  frequent the place. This time, I actually buy books and stationery every time. Every time I step into the store, I always walk out with an assortment of books and stationery. During a most recent visit to that place with my cousin, we played an interesting game. I would randomly pick up a stationery item and my cousin would guess its price. We would then verify the actual price and have a hearty laugh. Some of the stationery products are insanely priced. For example a pretty hard bound notebook of 200 pages would cost 800 rupees. We would discover this and laugh at the price. Even during this visit, we ended up buying 6 books to read and an assortment of stationery products! 

Given this attachment and interest in stationery stores, I was excited to read this book. The description of the little store with its shelves of stationery items, especially the fountain pen glass rack brought it alive from out of the papers. Joanne had a notice board in which she collected and displayed the things people scribbled on pieces of paper while sampling the fountain pens. The runaway vicar, the lonely elderly man and Jo meet in the stationery stores. The author gives a peep into the personalities of these characters early in the book, by telling us what they buy in the store. Jo, who is recovering from a recent breakup of a long term toxic relationship, is lonely and sad. In the beginning of the book, she is found to be deeply introspective, skeptical about relationships, afraid to talk to people and engage with the people around her. But the friendship with the vicar and the older man warm her up. As the book progresses we can experience the change in mood of all the three characters. Sally Page, the author, captures this mood change through the activities that the characters engage in and the clothes they wear. In the beginning of the book Jo is seen wearing just plain and simple clothes, and the older man grey colour. But towards the latter part of the book, they are wearing colourful dresses. They even dance together in Jo's home on evening. 

The fountain pen plays a crucial role in the novel. Initially the stores has serious, old-fashioned fountain pens for sale. But as Jo's mood lightens and her inner wound's heal, she buys and stocks more colourful and modern fountain pens. She makes them available for sampling for more people. She teaches them how to use the fountain pen, helps the younger children fill ink and sample them. She even teaches a hand-writing class using the fountain pen. The fountain pen is the anchor that allows Jo to interact with her community of stationery lovers. It helps her establish herself as a profitable stationery store person! The relationship a person has with their fountain pen is like an old friendship. Those of us who use fountain pens know this. Fountain pens take time to get used to. The first few pages that we write are usually always scratchy and rough. With practice our hand understands the right amount of pressure with which to hold the pen, the right distribution of weight on the thumb, index finger and the web space between them, and the right speed of writing. And once we get the right position, grip and pace, there is no looking back. It is a relationship for life. Each of us fountain pen lovers, have our old favourite pen which is weatherbeaten, but still we repair it, patch it up and continue to use it. Isn't that exactly how friendships work? The fountain pen metaphor spoke to me intimately and I could perfectly relate to it. 

The three friends collaborate to write a unique historical book. The author shows us glimpses of the collaboration. They huddle up in front of the hearth with glasses of wine and discuss and develop the book. What a beautiful collaboration between friends to create something interesting? I felt the longing to sit together with my friends and create. I have an amazing team of collaborators with whom I currently work. We do not work in the same place and so most of our collaborative work happens whenever we meet, or mostly virtually through internet calls. But when we collaborate, there is this mutual sense of respect. We know each others' strengths and weaknesses and we have learned to adapt to these during our team work. We collaborate to conduct workshops and courses and in each of those sessions, we have received feedback that our chemistry is perfect. When like-minded people, friends, collaborate to create content, something magical happens. The team is no longer just the collection of its members. It becomes something beyond that, it becomes an entity of its own. It gains powers that the individuals do not have and creates outputs which cannot come from the efforts of the individuals. I could sense the same feeling that I get when working with my friends, in the book, as the three of them sat together to collaborate to write the book. 

I took the book with me as an in-flight reading material for my long flight journey. During the onward journey, I read only a few pages and kept the book aside. However, I finished reading the rest of the book in an impatient and fervent speed during the 10+ hours of return journey. I couldn't stop reading. The book was highly relatable and spoke to me at a very personal level. Whenever anything is written or portrayed about friendships, it is usually shown as young people laughing, and having fun. Friendships have largely been associated with youth. But books like this one show the beautiful dimension of friendship as a life-long relationship between like minded people, across boundaries of age, gender, race, and every other social structure. Sally Page painted a beautiful picture in the canvas of my imagination through her words in this book! I am grateful for this experience!