The Magic of Ink

It was red and teal. My first ink-pen. Then it was the first step to growing up. Pencils were for kids. Twelve years later it’s not very different.

I had a terrible hand-writing, so my teacher in Class IV would not let me use an ink-pen. The rest of my class, however had made the transition.

But the inevitable happened, I was in Class V and everyone has to write with a pen in class V. I spent hours at the local stationery shop, looking for my first ink-pen. The Chinese nib ones, were not good. Our teacher was particularly critical of them, so they were a big no. Parker or Pierre Cardin were not for beginners, Mont Blanc was out of question.

So I settled for a red and teal ink-pen with a silver nib. The ink-tank in that pen had an injection mechanism. This made my very ordinary pen, very cool.

Thus began my affair with ink-pens. My hand-writing was still not very good. But I believed that a good pen would make a big difference. So I spent a lot of time at the stationery store, trying out different pens.

Then on a certain birthday my father gave me the most beautiful ink-pen ever. It was black with golden rims. It made paper feel like silk. It made my untidy hand-writing legible.

We were perfect together. It set in my palms, like it was made to be there. Writing with it was a pleasure. Exams, class notes, homework as long as there was something to write. 

I’d start all my exams with that pen. With it I managed to clear most of my tests with decent grades. It was good, it could not have been better than this. I had found my magic.

I was writing my final exams for Class VIII. As always, I had my beautiful pen with me and we started out on yet another examination journey together.

English language and literature papers were always very satisfying. After once such paper, I told the girl who sat in front of me about my beautiful pen. About how well it wrote and how good we were together. That the colour and the model of this pen was not easily available in the market now. I was very-very proud.

Then, before our next paper, my pen was gone. It was very disturbing. I had just kept it in my box, where could it go?  I bought another colour of the same model. It was horrible. It looked the same, but it wrote like dried wood.

Before our last paper, the girl who sat in front of showed the new ink-pen she had bought recently to me. It was black with golden rims. She said it wrote beautifully. I knew it did.

I shed a few tears before going the bed. I cursed the day, I told her about my pen. I cursed her for taking it away for me.

After that, I did not write with an ink-pen again. My pen was gone. It was with someone who did not even value it. It was over.

I moved on to gel pens. They were new and cool. I collected loads of them in different colours. I had my favourities there too. Then I fell further and moved to cheap disposable ball-point pens. Now, it’s mostly the keyboard.

After almost 12 years, I thought of going back to the ink-pen. I went to the staitonery shop and asked for one. They looked at me like I had asked for a dinosaur egg. They threw the Chinese nib ones at me, and I said no, instantly. Then the owner walked in and pulled out some old, dusty boxes.

I automatically went for the black pen with golden rims. It was not the same. So I settled for a simple grey pen.

When I wrote my first sentence, my hands quivered like they did when I was in Class V. I am re-learing and re-writing. It‘s like I am writing for the first time. The feeling has not concrete definition.

It’s like meeting a long-lost friend. Or meeting someone you liked after many-many years and realising that you never stopped liking them. Then you wonder, why did you ever give up on them, if you liked them so much in the first place?

I don’t know how it works with people, but I know that I can hope to find my magic again. I have found my long-lost friend. I have found the one I always liked, and I am not going to stop till we fall in love with each other. Together we will weave beautiful stories. We’ll create worlds beyond and our dreams.

….and this time I am not telling anyone about us.

The Exclusive Time Zone

"You live in a void, a time-zone an era that never existed. It's somewhere between today- tech-savvy, fast moving and yesterday- the time without this technology." 


Since I heard this evaluation of where I exist, I can't  help but keep playing the conversation in my head. Each time, I feel a bit more proud of it than before. Though this was supposed to be a reprimand, I can't help but take it as a compliment. I live in a exclusive time-zone. It is super-cool.

I was a child in the 80's. I knew a world without much of its advancements. A teenager in the 90's, the advancement started. I stared at them wide-eyed, and saw them enter my life so easily. I adapted I learned. An adult in the new millennium, advanced with all the mind-blowing advancements, yet yearning for the time when there was no advancement.

Putting it very-very simply. I know how to use a laptop/desktop/whatever-top, I write and send emails, check Facebook and all that jazz. Yet my emails are never what my letters used to be. Getting one, does not make me as happy as tearing open an envelope and reading a letter over and over again.

I maintain a blog, but what I write here, is not even close to what I wrote to my 'Dear diary'. Not even close.

I can type fairly well, but I can write faster. Pen and paper make the words flow. They are my magic. Writing on bits of scraps is more fulfilling than complete, saved word docs.

I read a lot online, it is never as good as reading from a book or a page. Books are beautiful. The print, the paper and the way it ruffles, that's what makes reading a pleasure. Turning pages in real has its own charm, you flow with the story, it could be a matter of life or death. Clicking next, does not do that to me.

An old book is more exciting. So many must have gone through these, now yellow, pages. They must have experienced all kinds of emotions and created mental images of the characters. When you pick up the book after years, you join this secret club. You take the same journey and you come out, feeling a little sad that it is over a bit too soon.

I am not too sure, if x number of page views give you a similar feeling. Maybe they do, and I am yet to feel them. Numbers, however are the anti-thesis of words. They are dead, cold, sometimes harsh. They tell the truth, rather they lash it out in your face.

This does not imply that I hate technology, or I am reluctant to embrace it. The reluctance comes in when I have to replace one with the other.

I don't want to. In my time zone or era, black and white co-exists with colour. Carriages and cars ply on  the same road. The writing pad and the iPad lie side-by-side. Google loads, while I rummage through a fat, dusty encyclopedia.

Okay, I am a hopeless romantic. I do wish that people talk, the way they did in Pride and Prejudice, and in my era they do. Some of you probably co-exist with me.

Hello! I think it's you, hiding behind an old, thumbed version of, lets see, a Dickens? 

Oh! Such a Big Mistake!

Correction as a profession is a bad deal. Imagine always having to correct people. No one likes being corrected. In our minds we are always right. Everything we do is correct.

So when someone sets out to correct all these correct people they are bound to question the correctness of the person correcting them. Which also means that the person correcting them cannot be incorrect, because if the corrector is incorrect then her/his corrections will not always be considered correct.

If you are bored of this blog post already, then try counting the the number of 'corrects' in the last two paragraphs. You don't have to tell me the answer, keep it in your head.

It is inhuman not to mistakes. Perfection is not a human trait. It is best left to vampires. Even God or whoever it is that makes things function is not perfect. If they were, they would not have let evolution progress beyond apes. Guess that entity had a laboratory mis-adventure and there came human beings. Now imagine if that entity had done everything correctly. Humans would never have happened.

Mistakes are nice. Some can be terrible but as long as you can look back at them and laugh, they are tolerable. There are some which might make you cringe in embarrassment and some which you hope know one knows about.

Mistakes make for interesting story. Things become exciting when you goof-up, when you go outside the circuit and do something wrong. You do something least expected. You make a mistake. At that point it kills you but then later you have a something to remember. Mistakes can actually make you famous!

What else, let's see... Are mistakes unique? Well if we classify them, then there are some which are stereotypical, like dating the wrong girl/guy, ordering bad food, buying something wrong, stepping on a banana peal, crashing a car. Most of these are made over and over again. Making them a habit might not be a good idea, but one should commit at least all of these once.

Then there are the unique ones, which only you can make. Perhaps no one wants the unique ones to be shared. If they come out in the open, they won't be unique anymore.

Some mistakes however can kill you. Those also make for interesting stories, but the person who made them can never narrate that story. It's always another person's version and it's not always true.

As I write this, I am trying to make a mental note of all the mistakes am yet to make. The list is quite long and am scared my brain might not be able to hold on to it for too long. The cops will have me on their wanted list soon. I am all set to make a lot of mistakes. You'll know. I will be famous soon.

EMPTY MINDS II-STORIES

The only people who really believe all my stories are my nieces (5 and 2 years of age). As of now I am their hero. They listen to my stories with big bright eyes, taking every word in. I don’t really know what they think of me, but am sure they think am close to their age.

Soon they will find other heros. Someone with better stories. Then they’ll look back and think what was so great about her stories? Why did we like them?

I need to collect better stories now. Write them down so that I don’t forget them. A person can be judged by the stories she/he can tell. How many new ones does she/he have. I realised recently that I have quite a few stories to tell. But now am getting repetitive like a lot of really old people I know. Time to find new stories before I grow stale and boring.