My Pen is Lost

When I was 11 years old and my command over English pronunciation was rather shaky much like my peers in the missionary school that I went to, this sentence uttered with speed became a crude joke. So not many of us, who had just started using pens as preferred instruments of writing, complained when we lost one. And in that boarding school there were many a case of lost pens.
In the mid nineties, when I was still a student streching my studies far beyond my intellectual capacity into a PhD course, my friend Daud Ali gave me a Mont Blac pen. Till then I had heard about the iconic brand and seen some samples at stores on Bond street, but had never ventured to ask the price of one or desired to possess one. The first MB pen for me was easy to get. Daud was carrying it in his breast pocket [being an American he was more aware of the brand and its value than I fresh from Delhi was] and all I needed to have one was a short conversation that went like this:
I: Is that a MB pen you are carrying, quite fancy of you to do so on your poor lecturer's salary.
Daud: Would you like to have it?
I: You are not serious
Daud: Yes, I am serious please take it [Did I tell you that Daud was an incipient Communist and did not care much for branded stuff]
The pen was mine. In the post-possession convesation that followed, I discovered that Daud had not bought the pen, he had just found it in the courtyard of the School of Oriental and African Studies where I studied and he taught.
For the next two years, I used the pen a few times only to sign my name on some university papers, preserving the pen with utmost care. For I had realised, that this was something I would not be able to replace any time soon in my life. After couple of years, the pen made its journey back to India. In the summer of 1999, the pen and I found ourselves at an Old Monk party in Calcutta on a special occasion - the occasion was very special for my father in law. The Old Monk was potent, my morals weak, emotions high and tongue lose. It was a fatal combition and in a rare moment of lapse of judgment, I offered the pen to my father in law. Who on this occasion behanved exactly I had with Daud and took the pen from me. That is how my first MB pen was lost.
Good fortune come to me again exactly 10 years later in 2009 when I, again by chance and sheer luck, presented myself for a business chat at a friend's office. The friend, a successful new economy entrepreneur, had got a few MB pens to give away to important people. Although I certainly did not qualify as an important person, he was kind enough to give me the last of the MB's in his gift collection. I do not want to name the friend for the fear that many of you may land up at his door steps to take advantage of his propensity to give away expensive gifts to undeserving people. Suffice it to say, although a successful entrepreneur he is as bindas as Daud in mattters of worldly possessions.
Having lost one MB and having got another one by sheer luck, I did take all the care this time not to give it away in a state of high spirits. However, luck did not seem to have been on my side this time too. I lost the pen thanks to the handiwork of someone who knew its price but not its value.
Since then I have had to do with ordinary pens like Waterman and Parker as I wait for yet another munificience from another friend. I can't yet even after 30 years publicly say "my pen is lost".
Anyone planning to gift me my third MB pen, I promise to keep it safe from strong sprits and weak human beings and much else.