Writing is dead

I don’t mean what you do in a laptop or a desktop, the actual writing, when there was only one way to do it; with a pen and a paper. And not just any pen, the kind of pen which gave birth to the golden ages of writing, the kind with which Dickens, Gandhi and Hemmingway changed the world. The Fountain pen.

When was the last time you wrote a couple of pages with a fountain pen? When was the last time you touched one of those masterpieces? Have you ever actually used a fountain pen before?

My Very own Parker.

I remember the days when I was punished for dying the white table cloth blue while trying to refill my pen.  There were exams when I didn’t have enough ink and had to dilute the residue with water . The tooth and nail fights with my sister for an unclaimed pen in the house. The sudden burst of interest to go to school just to show off my new acquisition.

The sense of comfort you get when you write with your own tamed nib. It would feel like an extension of your own arm.

May be its just me, I was always a romantic when it came to my pens. Although it was under my father’s compulsion, I attended special classes to cultivate the art of writing. I perfected writing with both hands. Calligraphy was my hobby, for those who do not know what calligraphy is, it is the lost art of taking about an hour to write a single sentence with a awkwardly shaped nib and glorifying it as an art form. The pens were designed for wonders, this was the birth place of today’s myriad of fonts. It all seems like ancient history now. Yet, I still have my first and my best Parker, if only I could find time in this unstoppable world, I shall give him some of my time.

Nostalgically,

Manoj B S