The Joy of Handwriting

I wrote five pages on a trot. I don’t remember when I last used as much ink in my pen. It gave me indescribable satisfaction taking me into flashback (yes, those black whirling circles on white background)…..

She quickly walked into the class carrying a sober expression on her face. The usual cute smile on her round face was clearly missing. It was an easy guess for all 58 of us - a deceptive calm concealing the imminent storm.

Nagabushnam and Vinay followed her carrying a pile of note books each. Getting books, chalk and duster from staffroom, borrowing cane from neighboring class teacher, noting down the names of talkative students were the top job responsibilities of class leaders. There were three leaders to manage the three rows in my class. I was the third one. That evening I preferred staying back in class which allowed me to utter a silent prayer one extra time. Mary teacher was about to announce the names of students selected for the handwriting competition. The year was 1991 and I was in my 3^rd grade.

‘Abidaaali is the only one selected for the handwriting competition’, she said in an angry tone.

I was more embarrassed than amused on hearing this. All I prayed was to be one of the selected ones, not the only one.

‘Show your notebook to everyone bench by bench’, she ordered.

It could not get clumsier than this for me. I had only one option, to oblige.  With a trust-me-I-am-hating-this look I mechanically moved from bench to bench displaying the page which had two ‘very goods’ and one ‘excellent’. ‘Did I over pray?’, ‘Is God punishing for not sharing water bottle with Humayun?’, the thoughts kept churning.

My handwriting is very much of old English style with all the bends and curves. Filling scores of cursive handwriting books played an important role. I was far ahead than my peers in primary school days. As time passed, all my classmates developed a great art of writing neat (like pearls, as they say). But I always took pleasure and pride in writing cursive.

Complete credit to my dad who took extraordinary interest during my formative years of schooling. He used to assign a one page home work daily during vacation before he left for work.  The inspection use to happen near to midnight when he returned back home. It used to be a dreadful experience. Bashing, tearing of pages and re-writing were common. But it immensely helped my sister and me in setting very high standards at that tender age.

The pen and paper experience has a special charm. Even during my graduation days I never imagined that their usage will be curtailed so drastically. I still try to write a bit wherever possible – to-do notes, a bit of dairy, while explaining any little thing and of course cheques. But it is all about mighty technology now and why not? How would it have been possible for my pages in dairy to reach friends across the world if it was not a laptop, MS Office, Blogspot, Facebook, Gtalk etc. etc.?