Meeting an Old Enemy – Add Gel

I met an old enemy recently. One I’d forgotten about. One buried deep in my memories.

A friend of mine made me meet the enemy on a random afternoon. Even after all these years, there was no mistaking it. The familiar off-white cap, the metal clip. The refill inside with the earwax like gel above the ink.

There was no doubt. This was Add Gel. 

For many years, Add Gel was the bane of my existence. I grabbed the pen like Nobokov and sighed. ‘Ah! Add Gel, the curse of my life, nightmare of my childhood. My joy, my sorrow. My yay!, my woe’.

For nearly everybody from my generation, Add Gel was a source of constant tension. When I see my friends suffer from anxiety, I have no doubt that Add Gel was an early contributor to their anxiety issues.

Before Add Gel arrived, the world of stationery for students was divided into two groups- Pencils and Pens. It was a black and white world. Or should I say, a Permanent Black and Royal Blue world.

Pencils were the first writing tools we were trusted with. They were supposedly easy to write with, but had a tendency of breaking at the tip. You had to carry a sharpener and eraser along. The marquee pencil of the era was Natraj 621 Pencil. For girls, there was the Apsara Flora – the exact same pencil but with pink flowers on white, so girls could keep in touch with their feminine side.

It is not a coincidence that Natraj chose maroon and black stripes – the Nazi colours – for their pencil. For I have seen the innocent pencil put to extremely cruel uses. I have had the sharp edges of the pencil squeezed between my fingers and twisted by cruel teachers. I once saw a classmate place a sharp pencil on the bench when someone was about to sit. Our white uniform led to a traumatising patch of blood on the guy’s posterior – a gory, unwarranted prequel to Laaga Chunari Mein Daag. I have seen guys keep a sharpened pencil in their pant pockets. Only for the tip of the pencil to pierce their thigh like a Viking spear.

Only when we graduated to 5th standard, were we considered worthy enough to use pens. The world of pens was further divided into ink pens and ball pens.

We were told that ink pens improve our handwriting, so they were preferred. Teachers of subjects that actually mattered – like Math and Science – never bothered about the pen you used. But it was the Hindi and Social Sciences teachers who were finicky about the use of the fountain pen. I have never understood the emphasis on handwriting. At the risk of sounding pompous, I have very good handwriting and even taught Calligraphy for a while. 

The story of how I stopped teaching Calligraphy is an interesting one. I was teaching the kids in my workshop about strokes and obliques, when an old man tottered into the workshop.

‘What is going on?’

‘Sir, Calligraphy. Ahem…like the art of beautiful writing’. 

In classic Old City Hyderbadi style, he asked-

‘Yeh seekhe toh kya hota?’

And I had no answer. Actually, kya hota? Kuchh bhi nahi hota! 

That incident made me realise how useless of a skill, how vestigial a good handwriting is. I have never come across anyone famous for their handwriting. Or someone famous who had good handwriting.

I sometimes wonder – after all those punishments and impositions – when teachers retire and sit down over drinks – do they drunkenly admit that they fucked up with their emphasis on a good handwriting? That they hadn’t imagined a world with smartphones, social media and the Internet. That nobody would actually write anything after graduating from college?

Fountain pens came with their unique set of problems. You needed to carry an ink pot to fill your pen. The pens themselves came in a few basic designs. The basic Camel/Camlin pens with a thick base. The startup MyMuse now sells them as vibrators on Instagram. There were the Chinese/Hero pens that wrote smoothly, but the nib was as fragile as Indo-China relations. The expensive ones came from Parker, peddled by Amitabh Bachchan. The proprietary refills were as difficult to find as a hit by Abhishek Bachchan. Perhaps, as a warning – the series of Parker pens was called ‘Beta’.

The ink from ink pens would leak into your pocket, your books, your bag, and eventually your soul. The earliest version of Bluetooth 1.0 was when we got Camlin ink on our teeth. You were surrounded by the smell of ink, and filling an ink pen was an experience as pleasant as trying to mount a Camel/Camlin while it’s looking for water in Rajasthan. You needed an ink filler for the process, and you better carry one along. ‘Cos if you used a syringe, you got strange looks from one and all. ‘‘Are you doing drugs? Do you know that people prick you in a dark hall with a syringe and a note ‘Welcome to the world of AIDS”?

Ball pens were convenient, but were not given respect in society. Your ball pen of choice was either the arranged marriage pen –  Reynolds 045 Fine Carbure. Then there was the dependable Cello Gripper. And the trauma inducing Linc Starline – in which the ink stuck to anything it found like a Symbiote. 

Ball pens were easy to hold and carry. And since this was the 90s, the usage of plastic wasn’t frowned upon. Greta Thunberg’s parents were in school, and with the liberalisation of the economy in 1991, people were simply happy to be surrounded by colourful plastic in pens, tiffin boxes, and cricket bats. For all practical purposes, ball pens were the preferred pens. When not under the watchful eyes of our teachers, we all chose ball pens over fountain pens.

Exploiting this dichotomy in pens, entered the villain in the market – Add Gel 

Gel pens provided a unique opportunity to satisfy both the parties. You didn’t need to fill ink into the pen, and yet the writing looked like a fountain pen’s. You needn’t look like the blue-tongued genie in Arabian Nights, and still develop a good handwriting and go on to become the next Boutros Boutros-Ghali. 

There was one issue, though. Add Gel pens cost 25 rupees. And even if you managed to get hold of one, the refill itself cost 15 Rupees. 

15 Rupees! Kids of today won’t be able to fully grasp the value of 15 rupees in the 90s. Sometimes, the entire amount of pocket money given was 15 rupees. The price of a film ticket was 15 rupees. Suhaagan ka sar ka taaj was 15 rupees. Har student ka khwab was 15 rupees. Pen might be mightier than sword, but using an Add Gel was as expensive as a sword back in the day. 

I have had friends who cut the refill and used the remaining gel as hair gel. And others who sucked on the gel, making them look like failed characters in an X-Men audition. 

But it wasn’t just the price of the pen and refill. Add Gel had another cruel trick up its sleeve. The refill was notorious for running out with astonishing speed. Sit down to write an exam, and the ink would run out before you could say ‘Atal Bihari Vajpayee’. On a good week, an Add Gel refill would last you a week. But if the punishment meted out to you was to write ‘I will not talk in class’ a 1000 times, the refill would run out in two days. 

An Add Gel refill was enough for exactly ONE social studies exam. Or for writing ONE love letter (including all the practice sessions and iterations to the final letter). Which meant that you couldn’t use an Add Gel for all the extra-curricular activities required of a pen. Like drawing goggles on Gandhi in the history text book. Or playing book cricket. Or to sign your name a hundred times on the back of the notebook. Because along with a good handwriting, you needed a solid signature to become the next Elon Musk. 

Which meant that you were caught up in the pocket money debt trap. You first bought the Add Gel, and then began saving up for the refill when it ran out. Like owners of electric vehicles who go through Range Anxiety, you went through a Refill Anxiety. But with the smooth writing and convenience, you were hooked to the evil pen. In a few weeks, you were like a meth addict – desperately looking for your next hit at the stationery shop. 

*

Like Narasimha tearing open the stomach of Hiranyakashyap, I removed the wrapper. How had the pen aged? How did it survive the onslaught of the Internet, iPads, and magic pencils? 

The wrapper advertised that the pen still came in four colours – red, blue, black and green. There was some bullshit about Japanese technology, along with the tagline ‘World’s Finest Gel Pen’. 

‘World’s’? Was this a global phenomenon? Were kids around the world tortured by this pen? Was this Japan’s revenge for Hiroshima Nagasaki?

The price was hiked to 50 rupees, which probably made sense. At least the brand had survived two decades. I couldn’t say the same for some of my favourite childhood brands – BSA SLR, Nutrine, and Ravalgaon. In a way, I was happy that the pen had survived. 

It still wrote smoothly. I looked at the pen. Why did I harbour such strong feelings towards an inanimate pen from 20 years ago? Was I a psychopath? 

Add Gel wasn’t trying to harm me. It was a company selling their product at a mentioned price in a newly found capitalistic economy. So why was I so angry about it? Perhaps my anger towards the brand was unjustified.

And then, I saw the bottom of the packaging. And found a quote that said ‘Quality First. Cost Second’. Not only was the cocky quote put on prominent display, they had trademarked the quote too! 

This was a cocky company that prided itself on selling premium products to children who were struggling with their pocket money. 

I decided to use the pen till the refill ran out. And when it’s done, I’ll fling the plastic body as far my eyes can go. Or fling it at the annoying pigeon that does vocal exercises outside my balcony, proving that pen is indeed mightier than sword. I will carry the pen to the plastic recycling unit and watch it get crushed to fine dust. 

I am not a psychopath, after all. It’s an evil pen. 

Fuck you, Add Gel! 

***

The Tragedy Of Rana Naidu

One of the worst side-effects of the influx of OTT platforms, is the need to choose what to watch. That’s one thing I miss about the cable television era.

With televisions, you browse through different channels like an alien from Neptune voyeuristically watching different earthlings. You choose which party you wish to crash – a movie, a show, a song. If it doesn’t seem like your vibe, you exit and crash another. Choosing to watch something on OTT seems like committing to a marriage.

The ranking system on the apps was supposed to make it easier for us to choose. But so starved of content are we in India, that anything noteworthy that releases on OTT finds itself ranked as No.1.

And so it was with mild curiosity that I set out to watch the No.1 show in India last week – Rana Naidu – the Indian adaptation of Ray Donovan on Netflix. This is not a review of the series per se, but something about the series struck me as real tragic.

The makers make a bold choice by casting Telugu stars Venkatesh and Rana Daggubati as the father-son duo with a bloody history. A choice made even more interesting by the fact that they are real-life uncle and nephew. Rana is a 3rd generation member of a dynasty that has been making movies for decades. It is not uncommon for sons of producers to join films, but Rana’s filmography is rather unique. Most star kids debut with safe films that involve four fights, five songs and a heroine with the IQ of a vending machine.

But Rana chose to debut with a completely non-massy film Leader, the story of a young Chief Minister learning the ropes of politics after the demise of his father. Since then, Rana has chosen to do films that are slightly off-beat in nature. Ironically though, he is known for the ‘massiest’ of his films – the Bahubali series.

And then there’s his uncle – Venkatesh. A man known for taking up the safest projects. A three-decade long filmography built on surfing the tides of the times. Go through Venkatesh’s filmography and you’ll get a fair picture of what was working at the time in Telugu cinema.

For readers unfamiliar with Telugu cinema, here’s a bit of a background. Venkatesh was the third of the trio of youngsters who were taking Tollywood by storm in the 90s. If Bollywood had the three Khans, Tollywood had Chiranjeevi, Nagarjuna and Venkatesh.

Chiranjeevi is probably the most well known – the only outsider among the three. Who created his own legacy and settled his entire clan as one of the power families in the industry. 

Nagarjuna is the second most known outside the Telugu states. He made a few Hindi films and also infuriatingly kissed Raveena Tandon in Agnivarsha – creating conflicting feelings in my teenage heart. The man with the droopy eyes and a moustache thick enough to trap Dawood Ibrahim in it.

And then there was Venkatesh.

Walk into any Telugu household on a Sunday afternoon, and you’ll find the entire family giggling at a Venkatesh film. While his contemporaries were stabbing thugs and slashing sickles, Venkatesh played the guy who bought pickles on bicycles. While the others were hacking people and gyrating with teenagers, Venkatesh’s films were about a polite underdog winning over the girl and her family. His films were about the common man who uses love over brawns. He told the story of the nice guy. He was a simp before the word was invented.

His films never promoted a particular community or caste. Of course, it was the 90s and you needed to slash a few villains here and there. But Venkatesh’s films also tried to make you smile, giggle, and shed a tear.

Which is why I was interested in Rana Naidu as a concept. It allowed a veteran of the industry to play a badass who swears, fucks, and kills remorselessly. I can totally understand why it was a Hindi show made in Bombay. For the fans wouldn’t have let him make such a show in Telugu.

For you see, Telugu audiences are extremely touchy about their stars. A standup comedian once cracked a joke on Mahesh Babu, and the association of movie actors and producers sent him an official letter demanding an apology for the joke! Even if a star wants to experiment, his fans will not allow him to.

As a show, Rana Naidu is mediocre at worst, and mildly engaging at best. In many ways, Rana Naidu is the latest in a long line of web series produced in India. Somebody in the offices of Netlifx, Hotstar and Amazon decided that Indians want just ONE kind of web series – those filled it’s guns, gangs, and gaalis. The kind of web series where everybody says gaandu and behnchod while sipping their morning chai. Ever since Sacred Games became a hit, we have been served similar shows – all with the same beats, the same stories, the same characters. So for the regular audience, Rana Naidu might be just another web series.

But for Telugu folks, a show like this is nearly inconceivable. Which is why I was thoroughly amused by the reactions the series garnered in the Telugu states. In online reviews, viewers passionately implored others not to watch the series with their families since it contained graphic violence, and a lot of swear words. The series was never promoted as family-friendly, but Venkatesh has always been the one that brought families together. I could only imagine the horror people would have experienced watching Venkatesh abuse and solicit prostitutes.

This further piqued my curiosity, and I sat down to watch the series. Rana Daggubati seems to be having fun in the series – using his impressive physicality to good effect. He swears with all the enthusiasm of a teenager newly acquainted with colourful language, going through the entire gamut of swear words – Gudda (ass), yerripooka (mad pussy) and modda gudu (suck my dick).

But Venkatesh is not allowed to do that. When he has to swear, he says ‘G’ instead of gudda. Imagine a gritty web series where the hero is constantly saying ‘Main tera ‘G’ maar doonga’, ‘Main tera ‘G’ phod doonga’. It’s hilariously absurd.

And that’s what makes it so sad. Down South, stardom is akin to electoral politics. People will worship you, emulate you, and fawn over you. They will do abhishekam and pooja of your cutouts and storm theatres in hordes even to support a terrible movie. But in exchange, you are required to abide by an unwritten code of conduct. One wrong move, and you are answerable to the fans. Your fans will put you on a pedestal for decades – give you money, fame and success. But the same folks won’t let you break out of your shackles. They won’t let a 62 year old man experiment with his roles at an age when most uncles take VRS and shift permanently into their smartphones.

Rana Naidu might have been created as a gritty thriller that explores the blood-hardened equation between a father and son. But it ends up becoming a sorry example of Indian stardom and the heft of fans’ expectations.

And that really, is the tragedy of Rana Naidu.

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