I had to complete an assignment and was as usual out of time. My days had been too occupied or rather I’d made the too occupied and had ended up with a ton of burden and deadline literally knocking on my head. The icing on the cake was the assignment’s first rule was that it had to be ‘hand-written’. And I was like ‘what?’ well, as a matter of fact I like writing in a diary and taking down notes when I am pretty sure I am going to forget it, so I was comfortable with the fact that I’d be writing almost 60 pages at my own pace. But then I had already lost my pace and I had a deadline to meet before some action was taken.
So, there I was with a cup of coffee and cleanly stacked A4 size sheets with the most comfortable gripping pen; ready to keep myself awake the whole night when outside my brother with due intention was having a party with all my cousins.
Anyhow, as I held the pen and started in scripting with my striking handwriting which had already deteriorated by the 5th page, it struck me that it was 60 pages! I knew that all along but hadn’t bothered to ponder over it much until I started penning it down.
Well, we all have adapted to this method called ‘typing’ which has made us lazy enough to write. I mean I was good at writing, and I didn’t even realize until then that I had lost not only my practice but also the speed. I was literally proud of being the fast writer who would never miss out on dictations or would never have to worry about not finishing a paper on time. Where was that me? I kept wondering until I realised that I was running out of time and rationalising that was not printing down any sheets on my table.
So I kept scribbling and scribbling until I finished my consignment, it sure took me more time than I had anticipated, and well I should say almost the double time. Even my handwriting had changed, which even didn’t look mine.
So what if we keep typing, well, it’s super easy you know. Probably most of ours typing speed would be much more than what we could write with a pen. But aren’t we just drifting away from the initial means. I mean I love the smell of paper and ink and it’s just wonderful to write, still all I do is type so that I don’t have to re-type what my hands already wrote. Sure, its way easy but it makes me think that if we continue this way and even our modern schools and colleges keep adapting to computers, one day we might consider writing letters on paper just like drawing for fun. Only those who will be good at it will be writing down, others would be just typing or even just speaking to their mobiles. (Even typing is being replaced now; I had completely forgotten that, some of us just like to order our cell phones!)
Moushmi Radhanpara 
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