24th October 2009 - The Scindia School

Qila Quotes | Paremts | 13Qila Quotes | Parents | 14 VOL 5 | Oct 2009The Joy of WritingIt was nine in the night. I wasat my laptop trying to do thecosting of a tender that hadto be urgently sent beforeworking hours the next day.My mind was really not there.I was thinking about a mailI was planning to write. Itwas an old habit, planning aletter.You see, I love correspondence. I used to write letters, lots of them, in an era when the red postbox andthe postman on his cycle were integral parts of our daily lives. For me, then, writing letters was a matterof pleasure fraught with lots of effort and emotion. There were various steps in the writing of a letter.First I would compose the letter in my mind. I couldn’t bear the thought of a letter, which had spelling orgrammar mistakes in it, reaching a friend. I was also very particular about the syntax and punctuations.After the mental exercise I would make the first draft on paper. Then I would read it carefully and makecorrections. Next I would re-read it and make further modifications. The first corrections would be inred colour, the second in green etc so that I could differentiate and choose between the two in the finalreading. My prized possession those days was a ball point pen, that had four coloured refills in it, giftedto me by Chechy [elder sister]. Before making the fair copy I would make a final draft. And then I wouldbe ready to write the letter. I was very careful to make an overwriting or two in the letter so that it wouldseem like an extempore effort!I started writing letters even before I had a friend to write to! I studied in the village school till class tenand all my friends were from the same village. But Chechy was studying in college, staying in a hostel.When she was home during vacations she would talk about her friends. So I knew Kusum, Uma and Valsalike my own friends.I do not remember when or how the idea germinated; I decided to write a letter to Kusum Chechy.Here I was, going to write my first real letter and to say that I was excited would have been anunderstatement. I thought at length about the opening line.“Hello Chechy, How are you”? Too mundane!“I wanted to write to you for a long time”. Why would I want that?I tried to be a bit more imaginative and tried, “How do you like to get a letter from the brother of your bestfriend”? That sounded silly.I must have tried a hundred variants but could not get the thing I wanted. Then it struck me, like a boltfrom the blue.I had read O. Chandu Menon’s famous Malayalam novel ‘Indulekha”. In that novel there is a contextwhere the protagonist writes a first letter to another character. Written in old Malayalam, it was a study inbombastic language. I decided to use that in a quote/unquote format and then say this is how I shouldhave started the letter but I am desisting from it; I am simply starting by asking how you are.After that, constructing the body of the letter was a cakewalk.I wrote the letter and posted it. I waited in eager anticipation like a student awaiting an examinationresult. My first letter was going to be judged.And I got rave reviews. A writer was born (albeit a letter writer!!).For me letters became an instrument for sharing feelings rather than exchanging news.But still it used to be a painful exercise for me, what with my repeated corrections and drafts.And then MS Office happened. I remained blissfully ignorant of it for years. Then I got my first PC withMS Office. I started using Word. It was easy and user friendly. Over the years I have become used to it.Here I had a tool that gave me the freedom to chop and change the text a thousand times. I don’t have toworry about wasting paper. I need not have different coloured inks to differentiate between the first andsecond draft. I can cut and paste whole paragraphs. I have spell check and I have grammar check. I haveauto correct options and I have templates. If a correction did not sound right I can “undo” it.I have hundreds of fonts to choose from. I can left align, right align, centralize or justify. I can emphasizewith bold letters and I can reinforce with italics.Whenever I start writing a letter saying ‘Dear so and so” I have this funny character appearing onthe screen telling me “it seems you are writing a letter” and offers his whole hearted co-operation incompleting the ritual effortlessly. I have steadfastly refused the temptation to avail of his services, though.So now I can write letters without the fear of it containing spelling, grammar or punctuation mistakes. Ican put my thoughts at random in the computer and save them. I can put them in order at leisure. Whatmore do I want?The whole problem is that I don’t want it anymore. I want my scrap papers; I want my four colour ballpen. I want my pencil and eraser.Painful though, I want to write on paper.Time consuming though, I want to write with pen.I want my head to detect and correct mistakes; not a program that does it for me. When I deliberately puta capital letter for emphasis, I don’t want the machine to tell me it is wrong; I did it intentionally, damn it!I am now getting increasingly intimidated by the exactitude of the machine. I feel threatened by itspresence in my thought process. I fear I will lose my individuality if I continue to use it. I apprehend thatin future it may advise me on my style of writing.Want to write like Milton, use ‘Ctrl’+ ‘Alt’+ ‘F1’.Is Shakespeare your choice, use ‘Ctrl’+ ‘Alt’+‘F2’?Why don’t you try Tolstoy with ‘Ctrl’+‘Alt’+‘F3’?I want my pain of writing. I want my thrill of writing. I want my joy of writing!Mr. Nanu Biju (father of Avinash Biju class XII C)Director Pavilion & Interiors