I wonder why ……………………………….. II

Perplexing questions I have sometimes wondered about ……on Sundays and holidays only, of course! In a series to appear on these pages as and when I give them voice!! Or keys on the keyboard!!!!

At breakfast this morning, I was stunned to hear that a lawyer friend, who rarely has time to meet friends of long date, has acquired software to make his workday short and his output large! His new gizmo listens to him speak and “types” the text into a .doc file! He has asked me to go his office and witness this technological marvel for myself! I shall, one day, soon!

But I could not help shudder in disgust at the thought of such an invention! I agree that the computer keyboard has already replaced the entire range of writing instruments I have grown up knowing, coveting (my sister’s Parker ’71, for instance) , and loving upon acquisition (the same Parker pen after my sister’s marriage in 1974 but she does not know it yet !)! In school, fountain pens and their distinctly down-market cousins, the ball-point pen, were objects of lust, envy, greed, and sheer sensuous pleasure!

Every June, I remember, new fountain pens were always part of the arsenal we acquired to be able to persevere through the academic year, along with reams of brown paper to cover note-books, labels with exotic designs to proudly identify oneself as the owner of all the latest additons to the scholarly arsenal, and other paraphernalia which made the long school day bearable and even fun! Students today will never know the pleasure of dipping the very end of the fine nib into a bottle of Quink ink and trying out its distinctive penmanship on a pristine white sheet of paper! You had to move it this way and that to find the “groove” into which the pen would later settle, much like an old, comfortable pair of slippers one wears around the house and refuses to give up inspite of their age and decrepit condition! Then, with tongue slightly sticking out at a slant from the corner of one’s mouth, head cocked like an inquisitive bird’s to ensure perfect alignment of letters on the page, one looked at the accompanying adult to nod confirmation : this, one seemed to say, is the instrument of choice to overcome the academic year’s challenges!

Of course, the enthusiasm for one’s new fountain pen could be short-lived! Generally, enthusiasm did not wane for a moment the length of a term! But the Christmas break usually intervened, and well-meaning aunts or uncles unwittingly tolled the death knell of the pen so proudly acquired in June! Colourfully packed packages yielded newer, brighter, shinier, softer writing instruments which were then carefully put through their paces before being drafted into the scholarly battery tucked away in Camlin compass boxes! Older fighters from the ranks, even those of recent June vintage, were put out to pasture, exchanged with unsuspecting younger siblings or considerate parents and grand-parents!

Maybe somewhere there is a graveyard for old fountain pens that either outlived their performing years or were discarded on a whim! Maybe they were replaced in childish affections by newer objects! Maybe the downmarket ball-point pens took over the world before themselves being stamped out by the ubiquitous keyboard!

Generations hence, the keyboard too shall join the ranks of writing instruments once revered and then left behind during our long march towards what we are told, is progress!