Goodbye pencils, hello pens: The class VI moment we all waited for

India Today

17-06-2025

For many of us who grew up in the '80s, '90s, or early 2000s, growing up didn't come with a grand declaration. It came quietly, in the middle of a school day, wrapped in an unexpected announcement from a teacher: "From tomorrow, you all can start using pens."It wasn't just a rule change; it was a transformation. One moment, we were chewing the ends of HB pencils and begging for sharper erasers; the next, we were clutching leaky Hero fountain pens or shiny Reynolds 045s, feeling older, more responsible, and just a little bit powerful.
advertisementThere was something beautifully irreversible about ink. Unlike pencil marks, you couldn't just rub your mistake away you had to live with it, scribble it out, or (if you were brave) use a correction pen and hope no one noticed. It felt like the world was trusting us with something serious.
"I remember coming home with an ink-stained pocket and my mom just gave me that look," laughs Ankur Gupta, 36, now a lawyer. "She didn't say anything at first - just handed me a lemon to scrub it out. That was my first lesson in pen responsibility."THE PRESTIGE OF PENS
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In those days, your pen wasn't just a writing instrument; it was a social marker. Fountain pens were considered intellectual, even noble. Ballpoints were dependable. Gel pens were cool. And if you had a Parker pen gifted by an uncle abroad or handed down from your father, you were royalty.Pen fights were a real thing during free periods, and so was pen envy. Kids would show off glitter pens with coloured ink and scent, or the magical four-in-one pen with buttons for red, blue, green, and black."I used to trade my lunch for someone's Add Gel pen for a day," says Swati Mishra, 34, a school teacher. "That smooth glide? Worth every bite of aloo paratha." We kept our pens in pencil pouches as if they were fine jewellery. Some of us even had 'lucky pens' for exams, and there was heartbreak when they ran out of ink mid-paper. The classic blue-ink eraser - that two-toned terror - promised miracles but usually left torn paper and regret.OWNING YOUR WORDS (AND MISTAKES)
More than anything, pens made us feel mature. They taught us to be careful, to write neatly, to mean what we said because there was no going back. The shift from pencil to pen was an early brush with the permanence of adulthood. "That first pen gave me a weird confidence," recalls Rashmi Nair, 37, a communications manager. "I wasn't just writing notes. I was telling the world I was ready - for responsibility, for mistakes, for all of it." We live in a digital world now, where children swipe before they scribble. But for a certain generation, pens marked the start of something bigger. A messy, meaningful, ink-stained journey into growing up. Picture credit: Generative AI by Vani Gupta