The thumbs restlessly keep pressing the remote while playing video games at a playstation. The fingers don’t tire out of pushing the buttons while texting messages and WhatsApping at a rapid rate.
In the age of instant e-mailing, e-commerce and Wi-Fi communication, writing by hand is gradually becoming a neglected habit. People may suggest lack of time and a fast-paced lifestyle to opt for the keyboard over pen-pencil and paper. But the question that’s cropping up in every mind these days is whether handwriting would fade into oblivion in the near future
From the previous rage of a rattling typewriter in offices to today’s keying in trend over computers for both formal and personal work, technology has apparently taken over manual labour in many respects. “Well, internet is not only a huge hit today but an indispensable tool of the current century. Our existence will have no value without it or will be rather difficult in its absence,” says Mumbai-based ad professional Jyotish Achrekar.
However, the old school literates still vouch for their adherence to traditional writing methods, which is by hand with the aid of kalam (pen) or pencil. Noted Bengali litterateur Debesh Roy clearly conveys his fascination for the chaos that scattered pens and papers build up in his study-room. “Computers are indeed blessed with a huge storage capacity but they offer a fixed boxy shape to the eye. The picture that a blank white canvas can conjure up through a writer’s vision while shaping up short stories or a lengthy novel is just incomparable,” shares the veteran author.
“Obviously the cyber-world is more technically sound. You can smoothly iron out those erroneous creases with editing commands like delete, undo, re-do, cut-copy-paste and so on. But I have been used to making mistakes, scratching them off quite frequently and then tearing out the paper to trash it like a crushed ball into the rubbish bin. Honestly, I am more comfortable in this space of rectifying and rewriting. I can’t escape that routine,” he says.
Another doyen ace poet Sankha Ghosh who refuses to accept this change of flexibility echoed similar sentiments. “I’m still holding the pen tightly and consider it mightier than any sharp-edged sword. I know tomorrow there could be a deluge of webzines or e-zines to woo us authors, but I’m adamant to budge an inch from the print world where handwritten manuscripts are still welcomed by a swarm of publishers,” he reasons for his rejection to switch gears from a pen to pen drive.
Former journalist Sayed Hasmat Jalal used to face a strange dichotomy between his conscience as a writer and his scribe’s job-profile. “I would use gel pens for my newspaper articles but often exacting deadlines would prompt me to key in the matter. One advantage of this technology is that it indicates the exact number of words required to fill in the available space in news columns. But for composing poetry, stories and treatises, I find writing with the hand more convenient for sure,” asserts the man, who has now turned into a full-fledged writer. Contemporary correspondents will obviously resort to dicta-phones and other voice recording options before filing their final copies on the office machine.
Many may argue about the tangibility and intangibility of things. “The physical presence of a library or a bookstore is far more exciting than ordering online through Flipkart or Amazon. I understand that today’s junk-snack fed youngsters who are always on the go would naturally take recourse to such options and even happily read on the Kindle on board. But I would seriously like to invite all of them to walk in at a bookshop and browse books over a sip of coffee at its adjacent café. You know, it’s nothing like smelling those crispy fresh pages of a brand new printed book and feeling its glossy cover,” suggests writer and bookstore owner Colonel Kaushik Sircar. “How many of us can resist the allurement of a bookfair or a literary fest. Don’t we mob its stalls or gather in front of an interactive forum discussion ” he says.
