Anokhi's - Bahi Khata Notebook

July 19, 2016

The review is simultaneously posted at my blog here : LINK

Well there are someday when you are shopping with your wife with not so much interest. Going from one store to another and yet she has not been able to find her perfect match for clothing. And you are dragged like anything and there is nothing which interests you and all you keep thinking in mind is : “I wish it was a stationary shop”.

Certain such instance almost happened when I was moving from one Retail store to another but hey I was not bored this time. The store that we went to was “ANOKHI“to shop for traditional Indian ethnic wear. It had notebooks made out of traditional block printed cloth cover and hand sewn. I was happy but not my wife as she did not like anything to her liking there that day.

Anokhi Bahi Khata Notebook – So this is what I came out with

ANOKHI’s origins can be traced to Jaipur and is traditional craft based Apparel brand. Jaipur is famous for many crafts among which two famous crafts are Blue Pottery and Hand Block Printing. The brand has essentially revived the traditional hand block printing craft and they use vegetable dyes only. The first Anokhi store was opened in 1984 and have grown manifolds with not just stores in India but also stores in USA and also many distributors in Europe.

Hand Block Printing

So this review is about the Notebook from Anokhi which they call “Bahi-Khata” which actually means Ledger – Book in Hindi Language.

DESIGN & BUILD :

Here it is all about Design. The notebook is beautifully designed has a sewn cloth cover over a paper board. First the cloth is pasted and then sewn for giving it strength.

Anokhi Bahi Khata Notebook – Front Cover

The notebook comes with different cloth covers and patterns and has string which makes the perfect case for Journal as sometimes lot of loose paper are kept inside notebook and string takes care of that when you close it. This notebook is medium size which is equal to B5 size. Though I also saw lot of other smaller sizes also.

Anokhi Bahi Khata Notebook – Rear Cover

The front and rear cover are made of same cloth and finishing is quite nice apart from the certain niggles at the centre sewn part inside.

Anokhi Bahi Khata Notebook – Paper Torn at Joint. I will probably paste a cloth here also.

Anokhi Bahi Khata Notebook – Corner Detail – Very Neat

Anokhi Bahi Khata Notebook – String Sew and and same string extends for wrapping around

Anokhi Bahi Khata Notebook – Bottom View

I picked this from store and it was all in display and thus there was no packing. Thus nothing much to say here.

PERFORMANCE / QUALITY :

Now the real part. As I have mentioned earlier and I believe most of us all know that the quality of paper as far as using with fountain pen is concerned is dependent on lot of parameters like ink resistance, shading, sheen, feathering, bleed-through, paper colour, smoothness or texture and few others. Few properties are also dependent with ink properties like shading and sheen.

There is a bright white thick paper when you open the notebook with Lord Ganesha imprinted.

Anokhi Bahi Khata Notebook – First Page

The writing paper inside is not super white, and is just leaning a little towards grey. There is no mention of quality of paper so I have no Idea of gsm of the paper.

Anokhi Bahi Khata Notebook – Writing Paper leaning towards grey colour

The paper is quite smooth and is has no texture. Love the feeling when pen touches the paper it is quite smooth.

The paper is lined and also comes in blank page format. Really love the feel of those top two green line at top as a Header.

All pens and inks performed really well, whether be it Italic nib or fine point nib.

Anokhi Bahi Khata Notebook – Writing on it – Front side

Anokhi Bahi Khata Notebook – Writing on it – Rear side

Anokhi Bahi Khata Notebook – Writing on it – Close Up – 1

Anokhi Bahi Khata Notebook – Writing on it – Close Up 2

Anokhi Bahi Khata Notebook – Writing on it – Close Up – Rear Side

As visible from above images it is quite clear that the paper has performed surprisingly really well. There is no feathering and bleed-through and even some inks like Diamine Majestic and Iroshizuku Yama Budo showed Sheen which my camera was not able to capture.

It has performed really really well. I though still feel the sewing and punching of notebook could be improved.

Performance summary is as follows:

Ink Resistance : High
Paper Texture : Smooth
Feathering : None
Bleed-through : None
Shading : High
Sheen : Medium

VALUE :

The B5 – Medium Size notebook with 100 pages was bought by me at MRP of Rs. 150 ( US $ 2.22 at today’s exchange rate of 1 USD = Rs. 67.47).

There is no mention of paper quality or no. of pages, though there are 100 leaves after my count.

Anokhi Bahi Khata Notebook – No mention of Paper Quality and Nos.

Though date and place of manufacturing are clearly mentioned.

CONCLUSION :

I was on lookout for the Journal for a long time and this has fulfilled all my desires.

Both sides of paper can be used for writing. And all the inks and pens have performed flawlessly. I wish the paper could have been a bit brighter though and the quality of thread stitching can be improved but @Rs. 150 I should not be complaining much.

I will recommend this to all Journal lovers to at-least try one. Trust me you wont be disappointed with the paper.

Oh by the way it is not available online, only in their Retail stores.

July 19, 2016

Sigh... By the time we can order it from here (north america).. the cost jumps to 10 times more .. add shipping and it becomes 20 times more.

Thanks for the review and congrats on your find...

C.

July 19, 2016

Sigh... By the time we can order it from here (north america).. the cost jumps to 10 times more .. add shipping and it becomes 20 times more.

Thanks for the review and congrats on your find...

C.

thank you for going through the review...

I beleive there are certain shops and stores in American continent also...

BTW do check ur PM

July 19, 2016

I love your Indian paper, have tried a few that fellow FPNers have sent me over the years... and have a few new ones coming soon.

My guess for your paper would be about 60gsm, bringing it quite close, in thinness, to Tomoe River... probably not as smooth. The cover is lovely. If you paste a strip of cloth over the joints (front and back) you could cover the little imperfections and never know they are there... Enjoy the find!

July 20, 2016

I love your Indian paper, have tried a few that fellow FPNers have sent me over the years... and have a few new ones coming soon.
My guess for your paper would be about 60gsm, bringing it quite close, in thinness, to Tomoe River... probably not as smooth. The cover is lovely. If you paste a strip of cloth over the joints (front and back) you could cover the little imperfections and never know they are there... Enjoy the find!

I blv this could be 70 gsm...

yes Iam gonna paste some cloth or some tape at the joint ...

July 24, 2016

Looks like a good paper for the price. Excellent review. Your color on the ink comparisons was spectacular. If it could be found at a reasonable price, I would try one here eventually.